Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and tea is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
