Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that look to lead to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
