Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, meeting with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his fresh authority to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell independence of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, yet, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
