Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans 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, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
