Tings are collapsing in the last installment 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 intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials 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 adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots 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 inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
