Things are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to quell independence of thinking, originality and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's doctrine and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is mysteriously crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
