Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the earlier books, but aged, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is regarded by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. An example of a opening manifests to be the origin of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
