Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
