Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that look to give on to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
