Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
