Rose Field Chronicles: Pullman's Thrilling Ending to the Northern Lights Trilogy
Things are unraveling in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a realm that seems, now more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Establishments are weakening, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is draining from authorities, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the Silk Roads from his seat in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that element might be, and methods to fight it, is the inquiry that propels this final volume, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's last foray into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling universe he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose geography corresponds to that of the real world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are filled with enchantresses and mythical beasts, but beneath those skies, transports are caught and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry Harrods shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then saw again as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began the series, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and persistent heroine of the earlier books, but older, more sorrowful, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, unexpectedly, the catalyst which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to depart in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he represents as her "imagination"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The church authority – the faith's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling incarnation of rigid, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the Magisterium's governing body, and is set on using his recently acquired authority to extend the religion's rule. Another protagonist, who rescued young Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an academic with a additional duty in espionage: he is dispatched to a key location to learn more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the enigma surrounding the rare and precious botanical extract which manifests in some way to be the cause of a societal and financial upheaval rippling out from Central Asia. The extract is regarded by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or esoteric phenomenon, and by yet others – the extremist "men from the mountains" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and if it should be removed or preserved is escalating in importance.
Like His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these narratives ran largely in parallel. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inseparably linked with the fate of the realm. Her individual quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her creativity becomes the key struggle in a larger battle with an authoritarian system which, as such regimes typically do, is seeking to suppress independence of thinking, innovation and expression: all the personal, defiant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles
The novel begins with the finding of a collection of curious cracks in the structure of the Earth's sky: portals that seem to lead to different dimensions. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with the antagonist at its helm, labels these portals as a problem to the church's orthodoxy and sets out to eradicate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible logic and back to feeling, yet, her certainty that these sites must be preserved – that what they stand for and their value is in some way vital – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the imagination, or the Rose Field, or no matter what we call it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
