Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
