Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
