Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing 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 flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
