Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
