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

Tings are collapsing in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and slanted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Control is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of rioters. "Some force is at work, very quietly, imperceptibly", says trader a trader character, keeping a vigilant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey

Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's final excursion into the elaborately built, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed three decades past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose history tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, transports are ridden and drinks is drunk, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first encountered as a child in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a infant in the prequel, the origin story with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still recognisably the sharp and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her division from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

Pan's decision to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she may have forgotten (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with wonder and risk on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The church authority – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's brilliantly sinister incarnation of austere, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of president of the church's governing body, and is intent on using his recently acquired authority to broaden the religion's dominium. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to security along a overflowing river as an child in the first book, is now an university scholar with a additional duty in espionage: he is sent to the city to learn more about the antagonist's plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial upheaval emanating out from that area. The oil is regarded by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical wonder, and by others still – the extremist "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an affront that must be destroyed. The question of its origins, its meaning, and if it should be removed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's deeds, and her fate, are shown to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran mostly in parallel. In the conclusion, they merge. Like the original series, Lyra's actions and her destiny are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her private journey to reunite with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a larger war with an authoritarian government which, as these systems always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts

The novel starts with the finding of a collection of strange cracks in the makeup of the world's air: gateways that appear to lead to other worlds. A particular window manifests to be the origin of the highly contested mystical extract. The church, with the antagonist at its helm, designates these openings as a threat to the institution's beliefs and aims to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to feeling, however, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their meaning and what they offer is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the field of roses, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a Blakean tussle between innocence and experience is established.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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