Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
