Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
