Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried young Lyra to security along a flooded river as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are shown to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to different dimensions. An example of a portal seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
