Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
