Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, innovation and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the world's air: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
