Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
