Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
