Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are faltering and failing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of president of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound power to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe. Her individual mission to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to stifle freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that appear to give on to alternate realities. A particular window manifests to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these windows as a problem to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that their meaning and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
