Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey 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, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
