Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's control. A key character, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
