Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
