Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired influence to extend the church's rule. A key character, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the unveiling of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
