Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably connected with the fate of the realm
In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's actions and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key conflict in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual fissures in the structure of the world's sky: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. One such portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
