Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
