Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
