The Rose Field: Philip Pullman's Nail-Biting Conclusion to the His Dark Materials Series

Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, here more than ever, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are weakening, or reassembling themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from governments, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of corporations, the hands of crowds. "An element is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says trader Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were secure and strong are deteriorating and giving way."

Core Enigma and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels The Rose Field, which picks up where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, according to many, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first introduced in the distant past, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography maps on to that of this world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the people look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in animal form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are caught and beverages is sipped, and mature professors carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in the first volume, the origin story with which Pullman began the series, is now a mature individual: still clearly the prickly and persistent main character of the earlier books, but older, sadder, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.

Interwoven Plots

Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a adventurous trek across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's family member, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the role of head of the Magisterium's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his newfound power to expand the religion's control. Another protagonist, who carried young the heroine to security along a flooded river as an young boy in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a secondary role in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears mysteriously to be the cause of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The oil is regarded by some as a tradeable commodity, by alternate groups as a scientific or spiritual wonder, and by yet others – the fanatical "mountain dwellers" – as a source of darkness; an affront that must be eradicated. The question of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be destroyed or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.

As in the first series, the heroine's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm

In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. Like the original series, the protagonist's actions and her fate are revealed to be deeply linked with the destiny of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her companion and rediscover her imagination becomes the central struggle in a wider battle with an controlling government which, as these systems always have, is striving to quell independence of reason, innovation and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be free.

Cosmic Openings and Philosophical Struggles

The book starts with the unveiling of a collection of unusual openings in the structure of the Earth's air: gateways that look to lead to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The church, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these portals as a challenge to the institution's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from rigid reason and revert to instinct, yet, her certainty that these sites must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is somehow essential – strengthens. "Dust, or the substance, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we label it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic tussle between naivety and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth

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