Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape 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 joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thought, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
