🔗 Share this article

Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the