Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
