Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
