Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, her actions and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the planet's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and return to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
