Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
