Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to instinct, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
