Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause 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 her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
