Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
