Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
