Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
