Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
