Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
