Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
