Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's control. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, her movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
