Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
