Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider war with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
