Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
