Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
