Field of Roses: Philip Pullman's Nail-Biting Ending to the His Dark Materials Series
Things are falling apart in the final volume of The Dust Trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting universe he first revealed three decades past, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and act like us, but are joined by external spirits, essences in creature form; where the heavens are populated with sorceresses and legendary creatures, but below, buses are ridden and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the prequel, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the spiky and persistent main character of the previous installments, but more mature, more sorrowful, more cautious, less certain. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the church's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to expand the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his plans. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The oil is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by others as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a source of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or preserved is escalating in importance.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to reunite with her companion and recover her vision becomes the key struggle in a broader war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress freedom of thinking, originality and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which humans can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The book begins with the discovery of a collection of unusual openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that seem to lead to alternate realities. An example of a portal manifests to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with the antagonist at its leadership, labels these portals as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or the substance, or the creativity, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical struggle between innocence and knowledge is established.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
