Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
