Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant 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 tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
