Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the church's dominium. A key character, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are shown to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the finding of a collection of unusual cracks in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
