Field of Roses: Pullman's Thrilling Ending to the His Dark Materials Saga

Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a world that seems, here more than ever, as a energized and skewed version of our own. Institutions are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from states, and gathering in the chambers of theocrats, the treasuries of conglomerates, the grasp of rioters. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says businessman Mustafa Bey, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are weakening and collapsing."

The Central Mystery and Her Quest

Just what that something might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, according to many, Pullman's final venture into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a domain whose landscape aligns with that of this world, but whose chronicles diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and think and behave like us, but are accompanied by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and mythical beasts, but below, buses are caught and beverages is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first met as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and determined heroine of the previous installments, but more mature, sadder, more cautious, more doubtful. This restraint is intensified by her split from her animal guide, Pantalaimon – but it was also, paradoxically, the catalyst which made him desert her in the first place.

Merging Narratives

Pan's decision to depart in pursuit of that youthful part of the heroine which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the driving forces of its predecessor, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering voyage across the continent and into the mountain region, encountering with wonder and danger on the way. But from the beginning, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the religious controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of rigid, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of leader of the Magisterium's High Council, and is intent on using his fresh authority to expand the institution's rule. A key character, who saved baby the heroine to security along a flooded Thames as an child in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is dispatched to a key location to discover more about the antagonist's aims. And underlying all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and precious rose oil which manifests in some way to be the origin of a social and economic crisis spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by various factions as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or mystical wonder, and by others still – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of malevolence; an insult that must be destroyed. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and if it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.

As in the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the destiny of the universe

In its predecessor, these plots ran largely in side by side. In this final book, they converge. Similar to the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are unveiled to be inseparably linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to rejoin with her daemon and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as such regimes always have, is attempting to stifle freedom of thought, creativity and art: all the personal, defiant ways in which individuals can be liberated.

Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles

The story starts with the unveiling of a series of curious openings in the structure of the world's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to different dimensions. An example of a window seems to be the source of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a problem to the church's beliefs and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to move from inflexible reason and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her certainty that these locations must be protected – that what they stand for and what they offer is somehow crucial – strengthens. "Cosmic particles, or the substance, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a Blakean struggle between naivety and maturity is set.

Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth

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