Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
