Tings are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Precisely what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but underneath, vehicles are ridden and tea is drunk, and middle-aged scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the institution's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a social and economic crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger war with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book starts with the discovery of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a opening seems to be the origin of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its head, labels these portals as a threat to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict logic and back to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is established.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
