Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
