Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
