Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
