Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
