Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way essential – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
