Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
