Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
