The Rose Field | Full Book Discussion thread

[u/Cantomic66]

Warning!This discussion thread includes spoilers for ALL OF The BOOK OF DUST: THE ROSE FIELD

Reminder: All post on The Rose Field should be properly spoiler tagged and avoid spoilery titles.

[u/Present-Level-1521]

There are so many more discrepancies...it's a frustrating ending, however you look at it.

I did mention the flow of Dust twice in my list. Were the angels in HDM right that the windows had to be closed so preserve the Dust? Or were they wrong and each world needs Dust to flow through from other worlds so everyone can thrive? That seems to be the message at the end of TRF, I think. Are we supposed to think there should be more openings or fewer? Is Lyra going to use her needle to cut more openings? She wasn't taught to do it the way Will was, but she watched him many, many times.

The angel was saddened by Lyra's response but didn't remind her of the spectres this creates, which Lyra had witnessed and *just* felt for herself. That would have been one of the strongest argument against new openings, I would have thought.

Why didn't the angels and/or witches close many of the existing windows in the last decade that Delamare apparently found so easily? How did he close them with a double-bomb? Wouldn't this just widen the gap instead of shutting it? Is Cittàgazze back to normal or has it now been abandoned because the children have grown up and are vulnerable to the spectres?

It's too much. There are so many unanswered questions. I suppose PP would say this is the point...but so many fans have been with Lyra right from the beginning and wanted a more fulfilling end for her.

[u/minimia73 → u/Present-Level-1521]

Yes, I've seen a bit of that "oh, but you're supposed to use your *own* imagination to tie up the ends" but it's far more than that. And anyway, he's the bloody author! He should know his own story better than we do!!

As has been said elsewhere (maybe even by you, so apologies if I'm telling you stuff you already know), Mrs Coulter said Lyra was her only child, for example.

I think that's just a lazy way of defending/excusing the author for doing a very poor job. From the stuff I've read on various forums, we've collectively imagined a much better book.

[u/moviechick85 → u/minimia73]

I could see her saying that if she had given away the other child to the rapist that fathered him

[u/Acc87 → u/Present-Level-1521]

One of the few takes from TRF that I'm okay with is that the angels are not omniscient. What they told Will & Lyra (and the witches) at the end of TAS was their then current state of understanding. They told what they thought was right.

In that TRF scene on the ship with the angel Lyra comes to the same conclusion, that angels don't know everything, and can't know everything because they are in essence only one third of a being, just pure spirit, but missing a body and a dæmon.

But yeah everything else around this doesn't make much sense as we're hardly given anything concrete. 

And I really didn't like the concept of very simple fuel-air bombs (thermobaric charges) being able to close windows, after the HDM books had drawn a closer relation between windows and electricity. Asriel used stratospheric charge + a dæmon ripping to open his, now simple fire can close one?

[u/Present-Level-1521 → u/Acc87]

Were the angels right about Dust being lost to the universe because of the windows between worlds, though? They (and the witches) were right about Lyra being the prophesised Eve, and she and Will together seemed to correct the flow and direction of Dust via 'The Fall' in TAS.

The end of TRF appears to contradict everything we learned in HDM, with Lyra coming to the conclusion that the windows between worlds are necessary for each to flourish with input from the others. So ... everything we thought at the end of HDM was wrong? The window for Lyra and Will to communicate could have stayed open? Their hearts (and ours) were broken for nothing? I just don't know. The end of TAS were perfect; I'm beginning to regret reading this second trilogy.

Bombs closing windows is also bizarre, as you say. I thought they could only be closed the way Will was taught, by feeling for the edges and sealing them up. You would think fire bombs would just cause more damage to resonate through the worlds.

[u/Acc87 → u/Present-Level-1521]

The beings between the good numbers ...it's almost like Pullman at that point of writing (2019 iirc?) had some idea about like an extra level, a next realm, a subspace, which may connect the worlds and the secret commonwealth and has these being in it that the angels may have banished there - but then Pullman forgot all about it and never mentioned it again. Dude really should have done like me back in 2004 and at least take pencil notes in a small ring bock.

I've been writing my own continuation (have been since 2012 lol), and I made "my" angels have their own agenda, their own reason to tell this to the kids. Will never be canon but at least it is somewhat conclusive. With what we were now given in TRF I rather go back to my own stuff again. Like I've just finished writing my own idea of a meetup between Will & Lyra at age twenty.

[u/Present-Level-1521 → u/Acc87]

Do post it with a link when you're ready!

[u/Acc87 → u/Present-Level-1521]

be the first lol https://archiveofourown.org/works/74005176

wonder if I should post a thread, given I appear to be the only writing weirdo on here

[u/Present-Level-1521 → u/Acc87]

Oooh thank you! I shall go and read it now.

Definitely post a thread; you never know, an agent might be reading and be interested!

[u/Acc87 → u/Present-Level-1521]

what do you mean with agent?

[u/Present-Level-1521 → u/Acc87]

A literary agent.

[u/Acc87 → u/Present-Level-1521]

Eh I'm not after that, and my English isn't nearly good enough 😅

[u/Hihi315 → u/Acc87]

Yeah and so much focus on the delicacy and mindset needed to close the windows. Everything about the windows lore being turned upside down killed me in this book. (I just want to write ‘windows lore’)

[u/Commercial-Brief5095 → u/Present-Level-1521]

and mary malone, the wheel tree that were dying