Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover 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 source of a societal and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story begins with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's atmosphere: portals that seem to open into different dimensions. One such opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The church, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
