Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
