Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
