Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
