🔗 Share this article

Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave 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 seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe

In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the