Things are collapsing in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, very quietly, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled in the distant past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh power to expand the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by some as a marketable product, by others as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the central struggle in a broader war with an oppressive government which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the discovery of a series of strange openings in the makeup of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular portal appears to be the source of the highly contested rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these openings as a problem to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "Dust, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
