Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
