Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
