Field of Roses: Pullman's Gripping Conclusion to the His Dark Materials Series
Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from states, and accumulating in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and durable are weakening and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Her Quest
Exactly what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which picks up where the previous book ended. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, beings in creature form; where the skies are teeming with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his newfound power to expand the institution's dominium. Another protagonist, who rescued infant Lyra to safety along a swollen river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The substance is seen by certain groups as a tradeable commodity, by different parties as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and whether it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the universe
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they converge. Like the original series, her choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual mission to rejoin with her soul and regain her vision becomes the primary struggle in a larger war with an authoritarian regime which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to quell freedom of thought, originality and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The story starts with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: windows that seem to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the source of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, designates these portals as a threat to the institution's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from rigid rationalism and return to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be protected – that their meaning and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – strengthens. "The substance, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean tussle between purity and maturity is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
