Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing 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 pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a observant 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 Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, 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 uncommon and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the fate of the realm. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of strange openings in the structure of the world's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. One such portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its head, classifies these windows as a challenge to the church's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
