Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
