Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's air: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
