Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the