Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
