Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation 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 go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel opens with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's air: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
