Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress independence of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
