Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the