Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is set on using his recently acquired power to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by some as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the finding of a set of curious cracks in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
