Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
