Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
