Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
