Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is viewed by some as a marketable good, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
