Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, 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 maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
