Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, warier, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance rippling out from that area. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the future of the world. Her private mission to reconnect with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, creativity and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be free.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The story opens with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to give on to other worlds. One such portal seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's beliefs and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict logic and revert to instinct, yet, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
