Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
