The Rose Field: Pullman's Thrilling Conclusion to the Northern Lights Series

Tings are falling apart in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's grand trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reassembling themselves along new and disquieting lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and pooling in the chambers of religious leaders, the treasuries of conglomerates, the control of mobs. "Something is at work, very quietly, gradually", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his seat in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are faltering and failing."

The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that propels the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor left off. This is, according to many, the author's concluding venture into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, souls in animal form; where the heavens are teeming with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, vehicles are ridden and beverages is drunk, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, less sure. This limitation is intensified by her division from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the cause which led him to leave her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

His choice to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her journey to rejoin with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of strict, bureaucratic wickedness – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's family member, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the position of leader of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound power to broaden the church's rule. Another protagonist, who saved baby Lyra to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a secondary role in espionage: he is sent to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and valuable botanical extract which manifests somehow to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval spreading out from that area. The substance is regarded by some as a marketable good, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric miracle, and by yet others – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an insult that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the original trilogy, Lyra's decisions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran mostly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they converge. Like His Dark Materials, her choices and her path are unveiled to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the world. Her private mission to reunite with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a broader battle with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is attempting to suppress freedom of thought, creativity and culture: all the internal, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The story starts with the finding of a collection of strange fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: gateways that seem to open into different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and aims to destroy them. As the heroine begins to turn away from strict reason and return to instinct, nevertheless, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their meaning and their value is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is prepared.

Plot Rhythm and Character Development

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