Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's control. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her individual quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's air: windows that appear to give on to different dimensions. One such window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
