Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about Delamare's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable good, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as these systems always have, is striving to suppress independence of reason, originality and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to different dimensions. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to move from rigid logic and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
