Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
