Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's sky: windows that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
