Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
