Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is consumed, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to expand the religion's rule. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply connected with the destiny of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a broader war with an oppressive regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to suppress autonomy of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, designates these windows as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and aims to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between purity and knowledge is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
