Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
