Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
