Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to expand the church's rule. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
