Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
