The Rose Field: Pullman's Gripping Finale to the Northern Lights Trilogy

Tings are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Exactly what that element might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, souls in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is drunk, and mature academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and tenacious heroine of the prior volumes, but older, more sorrowful, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to leave in quest of that childlike part of her which she may have forgotten (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to reconnect with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque voyage across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired influence to expand the church's control. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a social and financial disturbance rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by further factions – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or protected is becoming urgent.

Similar to the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a broader battle with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the structure of the planet's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into other worlds. A particular window seems to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the church's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The scene for a philosophical conflict between innocence and knowledge is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the