Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned 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 mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
