Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
