Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
