Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
