Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell independence of thinking, originality and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. One such window seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
