Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that animates The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature professors carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to extend the church's control. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which appears somehow to be the source of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is seen by some as a tradeable commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, her choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her individual journey to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that look to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between innocence and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
