Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
