Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
