Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, her movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – strengthens. "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 scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
