Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book begins with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the world's sky: gateways that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid logic and back to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical tussle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
