Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
