Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
