Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified 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.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and return to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
