Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
