Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element 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, reportedly, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to extend the church's rule. A key character, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her individual quest to reconnect with her daemon and recover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and art: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a challenge to the church's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
