Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
