Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
