Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are shown to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
