Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
