Things are unraveling in the concluding book 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 charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that look to give on to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
