Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray 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 landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "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 preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: gateways that seem to lead to different dimensions. One such window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
