Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
