Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
