Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
