Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key conflict in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
