Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
