Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong 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 animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
