Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the original series, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's air: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. One such window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid reason and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
