Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
