🔗 Share this article

Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world

In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The story opens with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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