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

[CalmConfident]

Hi all, a place for us to discuss once we’ve finished reading the book!

Yep, frustrating. Same comments as above really.

I enjoyed the second trilogy but there was so much hinted at and not resolved. I won't repeat what others have said. But even in the first book, that thing about Lyra being breastfed by Diana... What did it mean? Did it impact her? I was waiting for everything to come together and then it didn't. And spectres! Remember them?

It was really well reviewed and one reviewer said it was a more grown up book that didn't tie everything off neatly in a bow, and it's like reality in that the stories keep going. But I don't feel that's an excuse for the lack of cohesiveness.

Hasn't ruined Northern Lights for me at all but I don't feel it's been the same standard, in spite of a lot of great moments.

Also - it doesn't make sense that people in general don't know that people and daemons can separate. It would be rare but it would happen, imagine one gets left behind on a station platform or something. It would be sad but not this huge terrible secret.

Ugh. Just finished it. What a disappointment. I was prepared to be disappointed, but this sadly exceeded my expectations.

Completely agree with all the points already made.

So many plot lines started and hinted at and not followed up at all.

A complete u-turn from the HDM sequence re: the windows. The angels were going to help close all the windows, so why were there so many left open in Lyra’s world? Surely they would have started there!

And yes, 100% Lyra would surely have gone looking for Will once she discovered that the ending to The Amber Spyglass was a in fact pack of lies and that the windows were fine. Especially when she realised that she had her own subtle knife. Or did Pullman just forget what he had written at the end of HDM?

I can’t really forgive him for not bringing Will back at all, he was such a great character. Even if it was just to see what he was doing in his life. And what was the point of killing off Serafina Pekkala? It added absolutely nothing to the story!

The magisterium plot bits, I just skimmed over. So dull. The world through the red building, all the “money is bad” stuff right at the end - the way it was written just seemed so contrived, as if Pullman was trying too hard to be clever - “oh, look, what is happening in this imaginary world is just like what’s happening all over the world in real life!”

I too was confused about the whole needing-to-separate thing to go into the red building, which was a Big Thing all the way through the books until they all got there and it wasn’t a Thing at all.

No idea why/how Ionides suddenly turned up in the other world at the end.

Literally the only thing in the whole book that I was happy about (other than Lyra and Pan happily reuniting, of course) was that Malcolm and Lyra didn’t get together after all. The thought of that just gave me the massive ick, it was like a middle aged man’s fantasy that every young woman must secretly lust after an older man.

I could (and do) re-read HDM over and over, but this trilogy and The Rose Field in particular is a one-time-only read for me, I think 🙁

The icky old man’s fantasy was largely still there, just with the abruptly changed ending. It should have been properly taken out, in the preceding books and this one.

It also gives me the ick looking back the teens discovering sex theme in Amber Spyglass, which is a shame.

Oh, yes, I agree that the icky old man’s fantasy was still there - but at least it got abruptly pulled at the last minute.

I also agree that in the amber spyglass I was left with the impression that the (extremely young) Lyra and Will had sex, which I was all sorts of about, but I think that in the rose field Lyra does say that they didn’t. Which is a good thing, albeit another about-face in the plot.

It’s almost like this book was written by a completely different author who hadn’t even read HDM!

I can’t be bothered to look it up, but I’m pretty sure Philip Pullman had confirmed in earlier interviews that they did. And ‘justified’ inclusion of that element in TAS.

Well, Pullman has clearly either forgotten that he ever said that, or has backtracked due to a bad public reaction! Found the quote - it was actually in the secret commonwealth, not the rose field:

”‘You en’t never left Will really, have you?’
‘I think about him every day. Probably every hour. He’s still the centre of my life.’
‘We could see that, John and me. We could see that then. There was a question come up, as should we let you sleep beside him as you did? You both being what was it, only twelve, thirteen … We talked about that and it troubled us.’
‘But you didn’t try and separate us.’
‘No.’
‘And we never … It never seemed to be … All we ever did was kiss. Again and again as if we’d never stop. As if we’d never have to stop. And that was enough. If we’d been older, I don’t know, then it wouldn’t have been enough. But for us then it was.’ “

Have just finished it and agree with many of the comments above. I enjoyed it, mostly, and there are some very good bits. But the whole premise that there are still openings into other worlds completely undermines the ending of Amber Spyglass. And it seems really unsatisfactory that there are so many people who can separate from their daemons when so much was made in the first books of their inseparability. I think he was trying to introduce and work out so many ideas that he forgot about characters and plot. I would rather stick with the original trilogy and the prequel- doubt if I will reread either of the sequels.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the trilogy, but fully agree that this one was deeply disappointing. So much (tedious) build up and then almost nothing gets resolved. Agree with a lot of the above, especially about the contradictory position on windows between worlds.

I was really cross at Serafina Pekkala being killed off - and having Farder Coram’s daughter but not telling him?

Malcolm, Lyra and Pan got to the Red Building easily via air thanks to the witches and Gryphons, but how did Bonneville and Delamare get there so quickly by land, and without separating? Why did Captain Schreiber and his men get blown up - they had been setting off bombs without problems everywhere else?

Why did everyone sense quickly that Asta wasn’t Lyra’s daemon but nobody could figure it out with the author and the dog daemon?

Olivier Bonneville could have been a really interesting character development and story arc - but as it was it was just not believable.

What happened to the people at the Research Station?

What will happen in Britain and with Oakley Street? And Alice, and Malcolm’s parents at the Trout?

Ionides was leading the 10,000 strong army. He appeared at the Red Building without them. Did they all die?

etc etc

Just finished The Rose Field. As I got closer and closer to the end, I kept thinking surely there isn't enough space left to wrap everything up, and I was right, there wasn't.

So many questions left unanswered and threads that went nowhere. What happened to Dilyara and Chen and Strauss? What about the men from the mountains? I thought the witches were going to join with the gryphons to fix the air etc?

The fizzling out of the Oakley Street thread is particularly annoying. Why have it there at all? And Alice is a good character- you want to know more about her. I assume the massive army drowned in the moving lake which seems a tad unlikely.

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.

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

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 , 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.

Yes, this wasn’t just ‘loose ends’

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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 …

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.

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.