Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her path are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a problem to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
