Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, her movements and her path are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
