Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
