Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict logic and back to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
