Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
