Tings are falling apart in the final volume 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 skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book starts with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that look to give on to other worlds. One such window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
