Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the