Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
