Rose Field Chronicles: Philip Pullman's Thrilling Ending to the Northern Lights Saga

Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and tilted version of our own. Establishments are crumbling, or reorganizing themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the hands of mobs. "Something is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says merchant a trader character, keeping a watchful eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey

Precisely what that something might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth concluded. This is, reportedly, the author's concluding foray into the intricately constructed, deeply captivating realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose landscape corresponds to that of our world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, vehicles are taken and drinks is drunk, and older scholars carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which the author began the series, is now a adult: still clearly the sharp and determined protagonist of the previous installments, but older, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

His choice to go off in pursuit of that innocent part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an quality which he symbolizes as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and risk on the way. But from the start, deeper currents were in motion, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, procedural evil – is under fresh command, and asserting its power. Marcel Delamare – the heroine's relative, who faults her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is set on using his newfound influence to expand the church's rule. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to security along a swollen Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to the city to learn more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and valuable essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the origin of a societal and economic disturbance emanating out from the region. The oil is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual phenomenon, and by yet others – the zealous "highland figures" – as a origin of darkness; an challenge that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its meaning, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

Like the original trilogy, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably linked with the destiny of the realm

In its predecessor, these narratives ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her destiny are unveiled to be inextricably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reunite with her companion and recover her imagination becomes the key conflict in a wider war with an controlling government which, as such regimes typically do, is striving to quell autonomy of reason, originality and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles

The story opens with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the fabric of the Earth's air: gateways that look to give on to other worlds. A particular window seems to be the point of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these windows as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, however, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a poetic conflict between purity and knowledge is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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