Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a set of unusual openings in the makeup of the planet's air: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
