Field of Roses: Philip Pullman's Nail-Biting Ending to the His Dark Materials Series
Tings are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of business empires, the control of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final foray into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and think and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are caught and drinks is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, melancholic, warier, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which made him desert her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of her which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of austere, administrative evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of head of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young Lyra to safety along a flooded Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical phenomenon, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be inseparably connected with the future of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Like the first trilogy, her movements and her path are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the universe. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a broader battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to stifle autonomy of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the unveiling of a collection of curious cracks in the makeup of the planet's sky: portals that look to lead to other worlds. An example of a opening manifests to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The church, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and endeavors to eliminate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid reason and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is somehow essential – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between purity and knowledge is set.
Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
