Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
