Rose Field Chronicles: Philip Pullman's Thrilling Finale to the His Dark Materials Series
Things are collapsing in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and gathering in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were stable and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in animal form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and older academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to leave in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of strict, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the church's rule. A key character, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the first series, Lyra's actions, and her destiny, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the universe. Her individual quest to rejoin with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, innovation and art: all the inner, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The novel begins with the discovery of a set of curious cracks in the makeup of the world's air: portals that seem to give on to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a problem to the institution's beliefs and aims to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to move from inflexible reason and return to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical conflict between naivety and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
