Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
