Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and beverages is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be deeply linked with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the first trilogy, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her soul and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: gateways that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
