Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's uncle, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book opens with the discovery of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such window appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical tussle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
