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 seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first 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 clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from strict rationalism and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
