Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, transports are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a commercial product, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is becoming urgent.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is striving to suppress independence of thinking, originality and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of strange fissures in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to open into different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and knowledge is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
