Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
