Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
