Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant 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 Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a portal appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
