Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the church's control. A key character, who carried baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems typically do, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and back to instinct, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
