Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting 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 states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
