Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
