Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
