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

Things are unraveling in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from states, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the coffers of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that drives this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, reportedly, the author's final foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are taken and drinks is drunk, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a picaresque journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister representation of strict, bureaucratic evil – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from that area. The substance is viewed by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a source of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be eliminated or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's decisions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be deeply connected with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran largely in side by side. In the conclusion, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, her movements and her destiny are revealed to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her individual journey to rejoin with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an authoritarian system which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles

The story opens with the finding of a series of strange cracks in the structure of the planet's air: portals that seem to open into other worlds. An example of a opening seems to be the point of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its helm, designates these portals as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eliminate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid logic and revert to feeling, however, her conviction that these sites must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow essential – increases. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a philosophical struggle between naivety and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

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