Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing 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". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
