Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. One such portal appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
