Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
