Tings are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in creature form; where the heavens are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, bureaucratic malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about his intentions. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a wider battle with an authoritarian system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
