Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
