Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and strong are weakening and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pan – 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 search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in His Dark Materials, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that seem to open into other worlds. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
