Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of reason, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
