Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
