Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
