Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "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 poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
