Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
