Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split 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 leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
