Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
