Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, 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 Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
