Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict logic and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
