Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
