Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
