Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of business empires, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are faltering and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that animates The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans appear and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are ridden and tea is consumed, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the prickly and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, warier, less sure. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired power to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to Geneva to find out more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which seems mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The oil is regarded by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's actions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the central struggle in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, originality and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, designates these portals as a problem to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible logic and return to feeling, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the