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

Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from authorities, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and collapsing."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final foray into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still recognisably the spiky and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to depart in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and danger on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's uncle, who blames her for his sibling's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is intent on using his fresh influence to extend the church's control. Malcolm Polstead, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to a key location to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the source of a social and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by some as a commercial commodity, by others as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply connected with the future of the world

In the previous volume, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her path are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and regain her vision becomes the key battleground in a larger conflict with an authoritarian government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle freedom of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts

The book opens with the discovery of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: portals that look to lead to alternate realities. One such portal seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The church, with the antagonist at its head, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to shift from inflexible logic and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be defended – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we label it," she says, "we require it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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