Things are collapsing in the concluding book 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. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
