🔗 Share this article

Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling world he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and tea is drunk, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This restraint is amplified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to go off in search of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh influence to extend the church's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the universe

In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the fate of the universe. Her private quest to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story begins with the unveiling of a collection of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to different dimensions. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with its leader at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, however, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is established.

Story Tempo and Personal Evolution

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the