Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried baby Lyra to security along a flooded river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the destiny of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a set of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
