Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
