Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
