Field of Roses: Pullman's Nail-Biting Conclusion to the Northern Lights Saga

Things are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from authorities, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where its predecessor concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first introduced in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are filled with witches and mythical beasts, but underneath, buses are taken and tea is sipped, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still clearly the spiky and determined heroine of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, more careful, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's governing authority, and the author's brilliantly sinister embodiment of austere, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's uncle, who faults her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to broaden the institution's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which seems in some way to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval emanating out from the region. The extract is regarded by some as a commercial good, by others as a research-based or mystical miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The question of its source, its meaning, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

Similar to the first series, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they come together. As in the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her path are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to reunite with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of reason, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. An example of a opening appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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