Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to other worlds. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
