Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
