Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
