Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that look to give on to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
