Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and return to intuition, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
