Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
