Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
