Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
