Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but older, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her personal journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a broader battle with an controlling government which, as such authorities always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's sky: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to instinct, however, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
