Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
