Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to go off in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a set of strange fissures in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and return to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
