Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older professors carry luxury 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 infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
