Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring 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". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, warier, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to suppress independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the finding of a set of strange openings in the fabric of the world's sky: portals that look to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between naivety and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
