The Rose Field: Philip Pullman's Gripping Ending to the Northern Lights Saga

Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along novel and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the hands of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and durable are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Just what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the question that drives this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape maps on to that of our world, but whose chronicles tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are populated with witches and gryphons, but underneath, buses are ridden and tea is sipped, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a adult: still clearly the prickly and determined main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her split from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reconnect with him, were the driving forces of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in play, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural evil – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's uncle, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is determined on using his fresh influence to extend the institution's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to safety along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is dispatched to the city to find out more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and economic crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is viewed by various factions as a marketable good, by different parties as a scientific or esoteric miracle, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an affront that must be obliterated. The issue of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be destroyed or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like the first series, our protagonist's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply entwined with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and regain her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger conflict with an oppressive regime which, as such authorities typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and culture: all the personal, rebellious ways in which humans can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story begins with the discovery of a series of unusual cracks in the makeup of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. An example of a window seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, designates these openings as a challenge to the religion's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to instinct, nevertheless, her conviction that these locations must be preserved – that their meaning and what they offer is somehow crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between naivety and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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