Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying 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 vaults of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
