Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the finding of a series of unusual cracks in the fabric of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. One such opening appears to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and return to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
