Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
