Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
