Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
