Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The oil is viewed by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
