Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are populated with witches and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is seen by various factions as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe
In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to quell independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel opens with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. A particular portal appears to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
