Things are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and failing."
Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the air are teeming with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is consumed, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
Pan's decision to depart in search of that childlike part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to extend the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's actions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's movements and her path are shown to be inseparably woven with the future of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider battle with an oppressive government which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to stifle independence of reason, innovation and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious openings in the structure of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such opening appears to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these windows as a threat to the religion's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid logic and return to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between purity and maturity is established.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
