Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
