Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
