Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and strong are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed 30 years ago, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a flooded river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is regarded by various factions as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they merge. Like His Dark Materials, her actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a wider conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to feeling, however, her certainty that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
