Field of Roses: Philip Pullman's Thrilling Ending to the Northern Lights Series

Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the hands of rioters. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are faltering and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Her Quest

Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are joined by external spirits, souls in beast form; where the air are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the sharp and persistent main character of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, more careful, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her split from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who rescued infant the heroine to safety along a overflowing river as an child in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and costly botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the origin of a societal and financial disturbance emanating out from that area. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the future of the universe

In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, the protagonist's choices and her destiny are shown to be inseparably woven with the destiny of the world. Her personal quest to reunite with her daemon and rediscover her vision becomes the primary conflict in a larger war with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The novel starts with the unveiling of a series of unusual openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to lead to alternate realities. An example of a opening appears to be the source of the much debated rose oil. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, labels these openings as a threat to the religion's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from strict reason and return to feeling, nevertheless, her certainty that these places must be protected – that their significance and their value is somehow essential – increases. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the