Tings are falling apart in the final volume 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 charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
