Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division 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
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
