Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into other worlds. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
