Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
