Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
