Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's control. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
