Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
