🔗 Share this article

Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe

In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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