Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
