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

Tings are unraveling in the final volume of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along novel and troubling lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the coffers of corporations, the grasp of crowds. "Something is at work, very quietly, very subtly", says businessman a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were firm and solid are deteriorating and collapsing."

Key Puzzle and The Protagonist's Path

Precisely what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where its predecessor ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the intricately constructed, infinitely beguiling world he first revealed in the distant past, with the publication of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals appear and think and act like us, but are accompanied by daemons, essences in animal form; where the air are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, transports are caught and tea is consumed, and mature academics carry fancy shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first met as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in the first volume, the prequel with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the spiky and persistent heroine of the previous installments, but aged, more sorrowful, more cautious, less sure. This restraint is heightened by her separation from her animal guide, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.

Converging Storylines

The daemon's resolve to depart in search of that innocent part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the incitements of The Secret Commonwealth, which followed the protagonist undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and danger on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and Pullman's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under new leadership, and asserting its power. Lyra's uncle – the heroine's relative, who blames her for his family member's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is intent on using his fresh influence to broaden the religion's dominium. A key character, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing Thames as an 11-year-old in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the puzzle surrounding the uncommon and precious rose oil which manifests somehow to be the cause of a social and financial crisis spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a commercial commodity, by different parties as a scientific or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be destroyed. The issue of its origins, its meaning, and whether it should be removed or protected is becoming urgent.

Similar to the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are shown to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm

In the previous volume, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they merge. As in His Dark Materials, the protagonist's actions and her path are revealed to be deeply entwined with the fate of the realm. Her individual mission to reunite with her daemon and regain her imagination becomes the primary battleground in a wider conflict with an controlling regime which, as these systems always have, is striving to stifle freedom of thought, originality and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.

Cosmic Openings and Ideological Conflicts

The book starts with the discovery of a series of curious fissures in the structure of the Earth's air: portals that seem to open into alternate realities. An example of a window manifests to be the origin of the much debated mystical extract. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its head, labels these openings as a threat to the church's beliefs and endeavors to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible rationalism and revert to intuition, nevertheless, her belief that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they provide is in some way vital – increases. "Cosmic particles, or the extract, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we call it," she says, "we require it." The setting for a Blakean struggle between innocence and maturity is set.

Narrative Pacing and Character Development

At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the