Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
