Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
