Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
