🔗 Share this article

Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in quest of that youthful part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. A key character, who saved infant Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world

In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her soul and recover her vision becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems typically do, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of strange cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict reason and revert to feeling, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the