Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
