Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing 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 authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
