Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to depart in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of thought, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to open into alternate realities. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these openings as a threat to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be defended – that their significance and their value is somehow crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
