Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
