Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and reason and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, vehicles are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her individual mission to reconnect with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the finding of a series of curious openings in the makeup of the Earth's air: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
