Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and back to instinct, yet, her conviction that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
