Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
