Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
