Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
