Field of Roses: Pullman's Thrilling Finale to the Northern Lights Saga

Tings are collapsing in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a universe that seems, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from governments, and pooling in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and durable are weakening and giving way."

Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives The Rose Field, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, Pullman's last excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and older scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a child in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious protagonist of the previous installments, but aged, melancholic, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her division from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in play, and darker forces at work. The church authority – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, administrative evil – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who blames her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of head of the church's High Council, and is determined on using his recently acquired power to expand the religion's control. A key character, who carried young the heroine to refuge along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is sent to Geneva to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from Central Asia. The extract is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by different parties as a scientific or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its source, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, the heroine's actions, and her future, are shown to be deeply connected with the fate of the universe

In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, her movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her soul and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book begins with the discovery of a collection of strange cracks in the structure of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that look to give on to alternate realities. An example of a window seems to be the point of the fiercely disputed mystical extract. The authority, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from inflexible logic and return to feeling, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is mysteriously vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic struggle between innocence and experience is prepared.

Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution

At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the