Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
