Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and collapsing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book ended. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed Lyra undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his newfound authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to the city to find out more about Delamare's plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and costly essential oil which seems in some way to be the source of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a commercial good, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably woven with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts
The story opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the makeup of the world's sky: portals that appear to open into alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these windows as a threat to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible logic and revert to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
