Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
