Things 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 manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
