Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible logic and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
