Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking 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 chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
