🔗 Share this article

Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and giving way."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the original series, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider conflict with an controlling government which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. An example of a portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the