Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
