Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the fabric of the Earth's air: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is in some way essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
