Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to broaden the institution's control. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, her actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress independence of reason, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that appear to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between purity and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
