Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that animates this final volume, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are caught and drinks is sipped, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader conflict with an controlling system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and experience is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
