Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the world's air: windows that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
