Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors 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 prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
