Field of Roses: Pullman's Thrilling Finale to the Northern Lights Trilogy

Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that manifests, now more than ever, as a energized and slanted version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are deteriorating and failing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the elaborately built, deeply captivating world he first introduced three decades past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a world whose geography aligns with that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and act like us, but are joined by daemons, souls in beast form; where the skies are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is drunk, and mature scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to depart in search of that childlike part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with marvel and peril on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the church's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of rigid, procedural malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Marcel Delamare – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to refuge along a flooded Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a sideline in intelligence work: he is sent to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and valuable rose oil which appears somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The oil is seen by some as a commercial good, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its source, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her future, are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm

In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Similar to His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her fate are shown to be inextricably linked with the destiny of the universe. Her private journey to reunite with her companion and recover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thinking, originality and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which humans can be independent.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The novel starts with the finding of a series of curious openings in the structure of the planet's sky: windows that seem to lead to other worlds. A particular opening seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its head, designates these windows as a threat to the institution's doctrine and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from strict reason and revert to intuition, however, her belief that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is in some way crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is prepared.

Story Tempo and Character Development

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