Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, 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 origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to give on to other worlds. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
