Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
