Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the