Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
