The Rose Field: Philip Pullman's Gripping Conclusion to the His Dark Materials Trilogy

Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are faltering and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose geography maps on to that of our world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in animal form; where the air are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her separation from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

His choice to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which chronicled Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The Magisterium – the church's controlling power, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural evil – is under new leadership, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's governing body, and is determined on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about the antagonist's plans. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and costly rose oil which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and economic upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

Similar to the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like the first trilogy, Lyra's actions and her fate are shown to be deeply entwined with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell freedom of reason, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The story starts with the finding of a collection of unusual fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: portals that appear to lead to alternate realities. One such opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The authority, with Delamare at its head, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from rigid logic and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they provide is mysteriously essential – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic struggle between naivety and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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