Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by others as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
