Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
