Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and beverages is consumed, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial product, by different parties as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the future of the world. Her private quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell autonomy of reason, originality and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
