Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
