Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
