Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
