🔗 Share this article

Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first unveiled three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are populated with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and tenacious heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to rejoin with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities typically do, is striving to quell independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the internal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The novel begins with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. A particular opening appears to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a problem to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and experience is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the