Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
