Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's air: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
