Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
