Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
