Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell independence of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
