Things are unraveling in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Exactly what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an trait which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the faith's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the church's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by others as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an challenge that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.
Like the original trilogy, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm
In the previous volume, these plots ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply woven with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to reconnect with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thinking, originality and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a problem to the religion's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from strict reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
