Field of Roses: Pullman's Gripping Conclusion to the His Dark Materials Series
Things are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Control is draining from states, and accumulating in the chambers of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", 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 strong are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and tea is sipped, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the role of leader of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a swollen Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to discover more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the source of a social and financial disturbance spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be obliterated. The dilemma of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a broader conflict with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The novel begins with the finding of a set of curious openings in the makeup of the planet's atmosphere: windows that appear to open into alternate realities. One such window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these windows as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict logic and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously essential – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean struggle between innocence and knowledge is prepared.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
