Philip Pullman's The Rose Field - not yet, but soon

I’m about 1/3 of the way through. I usually get audio books these days, but decided to show the literature some respect and went out and bought a hard copy from an independent bookshop. Felt like I was lugging a brick around all day, I’m so unused to physical books now!

In terms of the book itself, I’m sure the writing style has slightly altered although no idea how, I’d have to reread the others with a highlighter. Sort of simplified descriptions of things for the first few chapters. One thing about Pullman though is when he describes Lyra, who has been with me now for 30 years, I can sense and empathise with every bit of what she’s experiencing. When she’s in pain, exhausted, dirty and uncomfortable, I get such an overwhelming and deep sense of it. Almost like I wish I could reach through the pages and give her a bath and wrap her hand up, put her in some clean clothes and make her a smoothie 😭 I never ever felt any depth of feeling to, say, Harry Potter as a character. JKR is excellent at weaving and world building, but PP is so good at texture and depth of feelings. I could close my eyes and touch Lyra’s hair in my mind, feel the slinky warmth of Pan’s body and fur. He described a man’s hand as something like clean, dry and cold - and I felt like I was touching it.

Anyway will dissect the actual story when more people have had a chance to read and I’ve finished. Will lug it about all day again today 💪🏻 people can continue to ask me about it and I’ll have to explain it’s not a children’s book! Or is it?

I’ve done virtually nothing all day except replenishing my mug with tea ☕️ 📖

Well that was fast @CalmConfident !

Maybe start a spoilers thread?

Finished 🤭

Loving this series so far. Belle Sauvage was brilliantly weird. The last book was incredibly sad, I thought, and brought up some really profound ideas about what makes us who we are, still in a great story. Was pleased to hear the next one's out soon.

My copy is coming this afternoon, and I’ve just this minute finished re-reading the last one - in which I’d completely and totally forgotten the last chapter 😵. Looking forward to reading it now, but only half hoping some of my questions will be answered. I wonder what this treasure only Lyra can get is, and I think the camel-like human characters without daemons from the mountains sound a bit like Mulefa.

I realised I find the whole idea of Lyra losing her imagination/denying the existence of the supernatural so weird and jarring - it's just not consistent with her character.

I think it’s writer’s prerogative to pick a cool daemon!

Strongly agree on the ickiness (to say the least) of lyra/malcolm. That and some of the writing about Lyra really pit me off the last couple of books and also changed how I viewed Amber Spyglass

A raven is a good one for a writer though. See Norse mythology. Odin’s ravens Hugin and Munin (Thought and Memory).

More concerning is the age gap between Lyra and Malcolm, and IRL the belief Pullman clings to about TWAW, which all of the His Dark Materials philosophy directly contradicts. But hey, it’s Old Male Writer syndrome. They write an older man getting off with a younger woman as a form of wish fulfilment.

I just saw this was coming out. I also had very mixed feelings about the last one. It seemed to take two characters I’d liked (Malcolm and Lyra) and twist them up. I found the build up of the relationship between them very unpleasant, particularly when you realise Malcolm’s been teaching her and fantasising about her as a schoolgirl (middle age fantasy much?). It doesn’t match up with the very moral boy he’s shown to be in the first book.

I don’t have high hopes for this one but I hope to be proven wrong!

Also very funny that Pullman thinks his daemon is a raven. It’s always a warning sign when you ask what animal a person thinks represents them and they pick a really ‘cool’ one. We can’t all have ravens, lions, orcas etc. Someone has to have a stork or a millipede (in fact, most people probably do).

Just on my way to my local Waterstones to collect my copy 😊

Great username @TheRavenKingsDaughter ! That was a great book. Thank you for the article.

I enjoy thinking about daemons, think mine would be a sea bird of some kind!

It’s out! Exciting. Up early today so bought it on Audible. Have trepidation after disliking the Secret Commonwealth.

Enjoying it so far!

Yes - the bears do have all those things - but they are distinctly un-human, and indeed, when Iofur Raknison tries to obtain a daemon and act more like a human, it's shown that this leads to decay and corruption in the Bear Kingdom. He is a usurper, and eventually ousted in his turn by Iorek, who is a "true" bear who has not tried to become more human.

The bears have a moral code and way of life which in some ways is like our but in other ways is alien to us. I might be misremembering but doesn't Iorek actually say that a bear's armour is like his soul, and this is why when Lyra first meets him, he has gone so off-track? So the bears are a highly intelligent and civilised species but their expression of self is different.

I suppose to expand on my original point, the humans' daemons represent both the good aspects of humanity/ human-ness, but also our distinct vices - our propensity to immorality, corruption, greed, and sin. Pullman makes it abundantly clear that a daemon can be as good or evil as their human.

I might be totally wrong about all the above btw! This is an interesting discussion, it would be amazing if Philip Pullman ever published his own explanation and interpretation.

I wonder if we will get more of an answer to this question - as in Will’s (our) world, humans are not aware that they have a daemon, and the mulefa didn’t have them either. So why do they have them in Lyra’s world?

my other burning question for the new book - is will she and Will reunite? It seems clear there’s still an opening to another world in this red building - assuming I remember correctly as only 150 pages ish in.

That's an interesting question! It's hard to say but I think the daemons are the sort of "essence of humanity" (confusingly, as they present as animals). Even the intelligent talking animals in Lyra's world don't have daemons, e.g. the giant bears. The witches however do, which makes sense as they are part-human.

We also know that the daemons are tied to to Dust/Sin - so the children who have had them severed are able to live, but they are reduced to shadows of themselves - little more than automatons. They have lost their essential "humanness", their ability to feel true pleasure or really any emotion other than loss.

We also know that daemons are sort of linked to, for want of a better word, sexuality and sexual maturity - they take on their fixed forms once they've been touched by a lover (I feel a bit weird typing that but I think it's how it's explained in the Amber Spyglass).

So I think that overall they represent the quality that humanity has that sets us apart from animals - our intelligence, our ability to feel very strong emotions, to love, to create art, to create meaning in life

Not sure if that all makes sense, I'd be interested to know what other people think they represent.

im rereading the secret commonwealth now to remind myself of where it was left. What do people think a daemon is supposed to be? There’s a lot in this book about whether or not they are real - I don’t think they can be your soul, because surely that’s the part of you that goes through the world of the dead (and daemons can’t go there)? So are they consciousness, imagination, just a random section of your personality/qualities - what?

Loved His Dark Materials but hated the misery and sexual violence in these ones. Not now sure if I will buy this, I think I’ll seek spoilers then decide!

Dislike that he seemed to be setting up Malcolm and Lyra to be a couple, with the big age gap etc.

It’s worse than that - Malcolm is a middle-aged teacher academic (but also a spy! And a fighter! And a heartthrob!)… he’s clearly Philip Pullman.