Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
