Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful 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 troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the unveiling of a set of curious cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
