The Rose Field: Pullman's Gripping Finale to the His Dark Materials Trilogy
Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."
Key Puzzle and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in creature form; where the skies are populated with enchantresses and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, facing with marvel and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in spycraft: he is sent to the city to find out more about his intentions. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which seems in some way to be the source of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Similar to His Dark Materials, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably connected with the future of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the central conflict in a wider war with an oppressive system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to quell freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, designates these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
