The Rose Field - come over here once you’ve finished !

I agree re Lyra and Malcolm.

this popping up again has given me the rage. I couldn’t read a book for a good while after as I was so disappointed in this one - it cut to my core!!

Thank you @NorWouldTilly !

Oxford Botanic Garden is completely delightful, @Civilservant. Well worth an hour or two if you’re in the city.

https://www.obga.ox.ac.uk/visit-garden

Is it a nice place to visit? (Sorry to add to the number of tourists!)

@OneGladCrow it’s not the (11 year?) age gap in itself, it’s additionally that Malcolm has known Lyra since she was a baby and was her tutor. Plus the writing of their story. All icky.

I did spend most of the heatwave sitting on Lyra’s bench. Or often the one behind it because so many people wanted to take photos in front of the famous one. Doesn’t make for a peaceful afternoon.

If only I’d hidden this thread I wouldn’t now have all my disappointment dragged up again …

Very late to the party and probably one of the contrary ones, but the Malcolm/Lyra thing actually didn't give me ick (did you know Mr Darcy is 8 years older than Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice fyi? I also know other happy couples with big age gap relationships, but I'm sure I'll get a lot of angry comments in response). I think it's worse trying to set him up with the woman who shagged him when he was 16 to get some grief out of her system. And said so quickly, like hey ho let's do that to tie up that plot line up, all good.

What annoyed the hell out of me was the huge amount of loose ends, the total volte face on the windows, and how abrupt the ending was. A previous poster put in all the list of plot gaps/loose ends and reading them here has annoyed me more. Are we seriously not going to tell Coram that he has a daughter he never knew about? Are we not going to hear more about Oakley Street people who were by far amongst the most interesting characters in the trilogy?

I really enjoyed La Belle Sauvage, felt it worthy of HDM trilogy, Secret Commonwealth was so-so, but Rose Field just leaves a foul aftertaste in my mouth. I feel like the time spent reading this trilogy was a waste.

Also - Henry and Ethel made zero sense and felt like a scene from the start of “Up”.

shoehorned in as if was important to tie things up at the end but just created even more questions.

why would Lyra give them her gold that Malcolm made? So they have something of value where they are going? Gobbledigook.

24 hours on from finishing it and still raging

So glad I found this thread! I’ve been trying to wade through this book since I got it at Christmas and only now on holiday have I succeeded.

Totally agree re the middle aged man fantasy thing which is just urgh. I saw a hilarious TikTok the other day which said something like “it’s well known the bloke you dated when you were 19 was the worst of anyone so why is it older men boast about being with a 19 year old woman?” 😂😂😂😂

The thing that irritated me the most was the bigging up of Lyra being older than Malcolm. But explained by pp above thread that he had to change the ending, so grim grim grim what he was planning and laying the foundations for and hopeless on behalf of the editors.

Am so annoyed I’m leaving it behind in the hotel library to frustrate another holidaymaker.

The thing I can’t get over is the fact that there are still open windows between our world and Lyra’s despite the fact that they were all closed at the end of Amber Spyglass. It is this that makes the ending of AS so complete and moving. I like La Belle Sauvage which works as a prequel. The other two sequels I will not revisit.

I will never acknowledge this trilogy as ‘true’ or canon or whatever the word is.

It’s such a disappointment that one of the most wonderful storytellers alive today delivered something full of very essential issues with the story.

As someone who works in children’s publishing, clearly everyone is too scared to edit him properly now and it shows.

I’m late to the party - just finished it. So many loose ends. And why? Another one for the list - Ionedes double crossing Lyra in the conversation with De La Mer - and then he just pops up at the end nothing mentioned about the double cross - all concerned for Lyra.

I also had serious ick re Malcolm - and you can read the backtracking, PP obvs responded to feedback but he needed to write that ‘romance’ out at the start of the book if he was really listening instead he goes for a continued ‘will the won’t they’ approach and this business of ‘he is younger than you’ gave me the boke.

And poor old Olivier what a 2d character who was dangerously psychotic and yet he’s delivered suddenly as an ok guy on the last page?! And what the hell re his parentage- that was just thrown in from nowhere and undermines so much before. Feels just like it was pulled out in desperation to provide resolution.

Zero logic to TP digging up the rose fields - the most valuable substance in Lyra’s world and they just trash it - that’s not capitalism! I really thought they might perhaps be stockpiling it to drive the price up or using themselves for a wicked purpose connected to dust. I hoped perhaps that finding the roses might heal Lyra in some way or provide a great new insight for her.

What a damp squib all that was.

I feel as if I’ve been defrauded: bought a “Friday afternoon job”.
When I was fifty pages from the end ‘I thought there’s no way all the loose ends can be resolved.’ e.g.
Alice
the requisitioned Trout
a return to Lyra’s world
The Bijou of Atlas
Hannah Relf
Malcolm’s special significance to the witches
Jordan’s
Brytain and the military
the ‘plague’ affecting Dr Strauss and his daemon
the Cloud Chamber
the gold circlet
how Delamere crossed Lop Nor
how Leila Pervani and Abdel Ionedes got into the other world
and more
The ending has unfortunately made reading The Rose Field and The Secret Commonwealth (for which we waited 6 years) wasted effort.

Strike has been the major comparison of the year. (I’d never read any of them until a few days before The Hallmarked Man came out - but was so fascinated by a thread where people had taken annual leave to read it that I had to investigate. And have now read them all.) Perhaps The Book of Dust did suffer by comparison - even if one doesn’t love the writing style of Strike, the characters and meticulous plotting propel you along.

But really, without Will, this whole serious would have had to be absolutely staggering to satisfy me …

@pollyhemlock yes Book 4 and Book 5 HP are overly long, but they are still well plotted and very readable.

Currently re-reading the Strike books, and really appreciating the careful plotting both within the books and across the series.

Completely agree. It felt like for maybe 2.5 books he was writing one story - intending to culminate in a big showdown at the Red Building between the bad guys (Magisterium and TP) vs the good guys (including Oakley Street, witches, Lyra and Malcolm, Ionides etc) and the complex group (the Gryphons, the men from the mountains, Olivier, Leila Parvani etc). Then he dropped that and turned it into something else - a not particularly original rant against commercialism and capitalism, with all the carefully built strands for the original plot left hanging.

Perhaps his editor was a bit reluctant to suggest changes given his status? I know a lot of people feel the same about Harry Potter 4 and 5 ( though I have never met a child fan who thinks they’re too long), but JKR does tie up her plots properly.

I enjoyed BS - possibly more than the original three books. SC I thought was ok, but left on a bit of a cliffhanger so I assumed that once I had read the final book I would appreciate SC more. But honestly instead of completing SC, RF has just left things in a worse state. Like someone tidying a house and making it more messy (and not in a pulling everything out to organise and put it back better). Just more threads unravelled, plotlines that went nowhere, too much weirdness. Really think they would have been better to leave the trilogy uncompleted. There was potential (Ionides was a great character, Layla Parvani could have been interesting, wanted to hear more about the men from the mountains, more witches, more Oakley Street). Reminded me a bit of the sad sad sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird which I don't think a mentally competant Harper Lee would have agreed to publish.

I’m still annoyed that this was such a disappointment . And the more people posting other things that don’t make sense the more annoyed I get. It was just such a bloody let down after literally years of anticipation.

Yes, this wasn’t just ‘loose ends’

Yes , I have read a couple of positive reviews which say things like ‘not everything ties up neatly but that’s true in real life’. Well, yes , but he can’t really get away with introducing so many new plot lines, including one which undermines his previous work, and just leave so much unresolved.

Just finished it. Wondering what the point of the whole thing was tbh. Oakley Street (and Alice) left hanging, almost mid-sentence. The whole magisterium army disposed of in a vague sentence - I had to scoot back to check when I wondered where they were later. Why/how did the bomb go off? Ethel? Who/why were the two authors writing what they did. Significance of Malcolm re the witches? Is there a disease killing the daemons? Was the magisterium against the conglomerate stuff? I don't mind unresolved endings, but this was next level. The release was delayed so many times and for so long, that I can't help wondering whether it was actually finished. Maybe the publishers just wanted to get the book out before PP shuffles off.

Yes , and we never really find out the point of the mysterious message.

Yes, I have to say the ex-Oakley St gang was the most interesting part of the book. I’d happily have spent more time with them.