Things are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and accumulating in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and solid are deteriorating and failing."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the skies are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and tea is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the religion's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to safety along a swollen river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by various factions as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Like the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are unveiled to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The story begins with the discovery of a series of strange fissures in the structure of the world's sky: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to intuition, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between purity and experience is established.
Story Tempo and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
