Tings are collapsing in the final volume 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. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
