Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
