Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
