Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
