Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined main character of the prior volumes, but aged, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to go off in search of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of rigid, administrative malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary battleground in a broader war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell independence of thought, innovation and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. One such portal appears to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's beliefs and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
