Field of Roses: Pullman's Nail-Biting Finale to the Northern Lights Trilogy

Tings are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a universe that appears, now more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the chambers of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the hands of rioters. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and strong are weakening and failing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives this final volume, which picks up where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose chronicles veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and think and act like us, but are paired by external spirits, essences in beast form; where the air are populated with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and drinks is consumed, and mature scholars carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, warier, less certain. This limitation is heightened by her division from her daemon, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

The daemon's resolve to leave in search of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in action, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister representation of rigid, bureaucratic evil – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the church's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the religion's dominium. A key character, who saved young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the scarce and precious botanical extract which seems in some way to be the origin of a societal and economic crisis rippling out from Central Asia. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a marketable commodity, by different parties as a research-based or esoteric wonder, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.

Similar to the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. As in the original series, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inseparably woven with the future of the realm. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a wider war with an controlling system which, as these systems typically do, is attempting to quell autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Dimensional Rifts and Moral Battles

The book opens with the finding of a set of unusual cracks in the fabric of the planet's sky: windows that appear to open into different dimensions. A particular window seems to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these windows as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to turn away from strict rationalism and revert to intuition, yet, her certainty that these locations must be defended – that what they stand for and what they offer is mysteriously crucial – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between innocence and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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