Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
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 picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply linked with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe. Her individual journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
