Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
