The Rose Field: Pullman's Nail-Biting Ending to the His Dark Materials Series
Things are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the