Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
