Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
