Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
