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

Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that manifests, now more than ever, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the offices of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels the concluding book, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed three decades past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the humans look and reason and act like us, but are paired by daemons, souls in beast form; where the air are populated with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and beverages is drunk, and mature scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent heroine of the prior volumes, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an aspect which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and danger on the way. But from the beginning, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie incarnation of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of head of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound authority to extend the institution's control. Another protagonist, who saved infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an young boy in the first book, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is dispatched to Geneva to find out more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious botanical extract which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial disturbance spreading out from Central Asia. The substance is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a empirical or mystical wonder, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be eradicated. The question of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, our protagonist's decisions, and her future, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the future of the world

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in parallel. In the conclusion, they converge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private journey to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a broader war with an controlling government which, as these systems often attempt, is striving to suppress autonomy of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, rebellious ways in which people can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The book starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the planet's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The church, with its leader at its head, labels these portals as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and sets out to destroy them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to intuition, yet, her belief that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the vision, or the Rose Field, or whatever we call it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a poetic tussle between purity and experience is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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