Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the planet's sky: portals that look to give on to different dimensions. One such window appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
