Rose Field Chronicles: Philip Pullman's Gripping Finale to the His Dark Materials Series

Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world

In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The book starts with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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