Rose Field Chronicles: Philip Pullman's Nail-Biting Finale to the Northern Lights Trilogy

Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are crumbling, or reassembling themselves along new and troubling lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is draining from states, and pooling in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that propels this final volume, which resumes where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, the author's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, deeply captivating world he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of our world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and gryphons, but below, vehicles are caught and beverages is sipped, and older professors carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a child in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then revisited as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent protagonist of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across Europe and into the mountain region, encountering with amazement and danger on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. The antagonist – the heroine's uncle, who faults her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to extend the religion's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued young the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about the antagonist's intentions. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which seems somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is becoming urgent.

As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inseparably linked with the future of the world

In its predecessor, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In The Rose Field, they merge. Similar to the original series, the protagonist's choices and her fate are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private quest to rejoin with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the primary struggle in a larger conflict with an controlling regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is attempting to quell autonomy of thought, originality and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The story begins with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to open into other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a threat to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from strict rationalism and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously vital – grows. "Dust, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a philosophical tussle between innocence and experience is established.

Plot Rhythm and Personal Evolution

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