Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, 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 president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
