Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and return to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
