Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that youthful part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw Lyra undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to extend the religion's control. A key character, who rescued young Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's intentions. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a tradeable product, by others as a scientific or esoteric wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. Like the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the unveiling of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening appears to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with its leader at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the church's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
