Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
