Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her personal mission to reunite with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
