Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
