Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
