🔗 Share this article

Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's grand trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and durable are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's final foray into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, souls in animal form; where the skies are populated with witches and legendary creatures, but below, transports are taken and beverages is drunk, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, administrative evil – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the office of head of the authority's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the religion's rule. A key character, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about his intentions. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which seems somehow to be the origin of a social and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The substance is seen by some as a marketable product, by different parties as a empirical or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is escalating in importance.

As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they come together. As in the original series, her choices and her path are shown to be inextricably woven with the future of the universe. Her private mission to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book starts with the unveiling of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to give on to alternate realities. One such opening seems to be the source of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the