Things are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities typically do, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The story starts with the discovery of a series of strange cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to open into other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
