Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
