Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine'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 determined on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
