Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh power to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. An example of a portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously essential – grows. "Dust, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic struggle between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
