Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. A particular portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
