Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
