Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
