Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk 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 brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
