Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history 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 skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book opens with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's air: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
