Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the world's air: gateways that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
