Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
