Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
