Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in search of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress freedom of thinking, creativity and culture: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that seem to open into alternate realities. One such window appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to instinct, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
