Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
