Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems somehow to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, innovation and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
