Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
