Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to security along a swollen river as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her destiny are unveiled to be deeply woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these windows as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible rationalism and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
