Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the