Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
