Field of Roses: Pullman's Thrilling Conclusion to the His Dark Materials Trilogy
Tings are unraveling in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the control of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are weakening and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but aged, sadder, warier, less certain. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that youthful part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of austere, bureaucratic malice – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is assigned to the city to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which seems somehow to be the origin of a societal and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is viewed by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual miracle, and by others still – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the fate of the world. Her private quest to reconnect with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles
The novel opens with the unveiling of a set of unusual openings in the fabric of the world's air: gateways that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular opening manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and endeavors to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from rigid rationalism and back to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is somehow crucial – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
