Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. 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 behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the church's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that look to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
