Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more cautious, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of her which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound influence to expand the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, her actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the future of the realm. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell freedom of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: portals that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and back to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic conflict between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
