Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual quest to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the planet's air: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
