Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
