Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames 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 Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
