Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
