Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
