Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
