Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
