Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
