Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's control. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
