Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to quell autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that look to lead to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
