Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried young Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her movements and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
