Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
