Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
