Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
