Tings are collapsing in the last installment 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 intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw 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, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
