Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that look to lead to other worlds. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
