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

Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, in this volume especially, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reorganizing themselves along new and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is flowing away from governments, and accumulating in the offices of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Elements we thought were stable and solid are weakening and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor ended. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of this world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in animal form; where the skies are filled with witches and legendary creatures, but underneath, transports are taken and tea is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury 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 first volume, the introductory book with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and tenacious main character of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in search of that childlike part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which saw Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, deeper currents were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's ruling body, and the author's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the church's control. Another protagonist, who saved young the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in espionage: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's intentions. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a social and financial crisis rippling out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a scientific or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is becoming urgent.

Like the first series, Lyra's actions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world

In its predecessor, these plots ran broadly in side by side. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her path are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private journey to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the primary conflict in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and expression: all the personal, rebellious ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The novel begins with the discovery of a series of curious cracks in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to different dimensions. One such opening seems to be the source of the fiercely disputed rose oil. The Magisterium, with its leader at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to turn away from inflexible reason and back to feeling, yet, her belief that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is somehow crucial – increases. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and experience is set.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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