Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the