Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, 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 introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. One such window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
