Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's last excursion into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in creature form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but below, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of strict, administrative wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of leader of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his fresh power to broaden the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the universe. Her private journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a broader conflict with an oppressive system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell independence of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The book starts with the discovery of a collection of curious cracks in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that appear to give on to other worlds. A particular portal seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
