Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
