Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are taken and beverages is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to broaden the institution's control. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's intentions. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In its predecessor, these storylines ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her actions and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary battleground in a larger conflict with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these windows as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
