Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and determined main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable good, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these openings as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
