Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
