Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
