Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
