Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
