Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is intensified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe
In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal mission to reunite with her soul and regain her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. A particular portal manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
