Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
