Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the unveiling of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. One such window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and return to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
