Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her destiny are shown to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the discovery of a series of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that look to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from rigid reason and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
