Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
