Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
