Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar 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 draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
