Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an quality which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued baby Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from Central Asia. The oil is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the world
In its predecessor, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a broader war with an oppressive system which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The book starts with the finding of a series of unusual openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to different dimensions. One such portal manifests to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these openings as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical tussle between innocence and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
