The Rose Field: Pullman's Gripping Ending to the His Dark Materials Trilogy

Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The story starts with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the world's air: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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