Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
