Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
