Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
