Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by some as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. One such portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to intuition, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
