What I Read

Posted by Erin Ptah

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2026/02/11/erin-reads-the-rose-field-part-2a-chapters-9-15/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=9895

“Part 1” of The Rose Field was chapters 1-8. “Part 2” is twice as long (chapters 9-22), and I haven’t gotten any less chatty. So you’re getting a Post 2A and a Post 2B. Look forward to a 3A and a 3B to finish off the set.

As of this roundup, I’ve finished the whole book. Post will have light spoilers, in the notes I put in while editing. Comments are a free-for-all.

Still adding relevant BBC HDM screencaps to break up the text.

Sidenote: At some point in the middle of the original liveblog, I managed to injure my hand. Nowhere near as bad as Lyra’s — I kept an ice pack on it for the first several hours, and within two days, it only hurt if I touched/bent the injured part wrong. (The next week saw a steady decrease in which kinds of motion counted as “doing it wrong.”)

But every time I did, I remembered how Lyra’s spent this whole book with full-on broken fingers, and have an extra wince of sympathy. The only treatment she’s had is some (rose-scented) salve. She hasn’t even splinted them! Has to be a miserable, constant pain.

Chapter 9:

Lyra and Asta agree to pose as a paired set, and start planning to rescue Ionedes, the only person the authorities actually managed to grab.

Pan is with the same gryphons who got Mal, so they have a nice parallel reunion. Pan makes introductions. Notable that he talks Malcolm up, as a “learned scholar” and “master craftsman” and such, but it’s nothing like Lyra’s “I am a traveling witch queen” type of lies. Just a well-polished truth.

Because Mal has red-gold hair, the gryphons think he’s literally made of gold?

If it turns out the entire “terrifying Simurgh defending the fantastical rose gardens” legend was because “they think the Amber Roses are literal gold too”…that’s going to be SO stupid. Funny! But still dumb!

[Future editing note: This is never explicitly made canon…but we never get any reveal to indicate it’s not that, either.]

Good Lyra-Asta teamwork. With the first “daemon taking the lead on a cover story” incident I can remember all series (Asta scolds a guard’s daemon for obstructing Prince Edward’s daughter).

Stashing Lyra’s stuff on the street, oof. She keeps her stick, and the alethiometer needle, but I think she leaves the cash…?

[Futre note: It turns out fine.]

They collectively pose as a maid to sneak into the prison, and Lyra uses her Subtle Needle to slice up the lock on Ionedes’ cell. Nice little moment when Lyra works out that, to cut the hardest materials, she has to get into the same relaxed mindset Will used with the Knife.

Chapter 10:

A super short one this time.

The charming Leila interrupts the rescue, says she knows Ionedes (by a different name, maybe even his real one), and she’s here to help.

…I really appreciate Lyra not immediately believing her! For once, a reasonable level of suspicion.

Leila does help them sneak out. Ionedes is heavily injured, but they make it. Lyra successfully retrieves her stuff, they hop on a bus, and we’re off.

Plus a brief check-in with the shenanigans afoot at the research station. TBD what that’s building toward.

–

Chapter 11:

Talk between Mal and Pan. Lots of juicy stuff here.

Malcolm tries to soothe Pan, without crossing any boundaries. Later, Pan cuddles up to Mal in his sleep. Aw.

Reassuring Pan how Lyra is coming for him, wants to find him so badly…it comes off like Pan was snatchedvaway from Lyra against his will. Even though it’s Pan who ran off, saying he couldn’t be around Lyra anymore. Then chose to leave the Blue Hotel before she got there, instead of waiting.

Is Mal making bad assumptions? Or is this a flip of the usual human-daemon dynamic, where the daemon is the part that’s denying/repressing their true feelings?

Pan: What do you think the imagination is?
Mal: Didn’t you set off to find Lyra’s imagination? You must have had some idea of what you were looking for.

(No! No, he did not! At all!)

Pan does some recap. Admits he was unfair to Lyra, but still has some weird accusations. “It was as if the philosopher, Brande, as if he was her father and she was trying to please him.” Really? First time Pan’s mentioned it.

(It is A Thing that Lyra gravitates toward “dad-coded older men.” Coram, Lee, Iorek, Makepeace, the old Master of Jordan, even kinda Ionedes. Not really the vibe I got from her reading habits, though.)

[Image: young Lyra working on her dad collection.]

Mal reveals: when he struggled teaching teen Lyra, the old Master told him a bunch of stuff about Lyra’s trip North, and the “great betrayal” prophecy.

Ehhh. I feel like this is Pullman trying to shove that recap in somewhere, and it’s an awkward fit.

TSC already had Mal+Alice recap LBS, and Lyra’s very valid complaint of “it sucks how people are keeping all these secrets from me about my own life.”

That didn’t prompt Mal to go “uh, full disclosure, I know one more”?

Even if it didn’t occur to him in the moment, he hasn’t had an “oh snap, I should’ve told her about this too” realization since, either!

Won’t text-search TRF right now, because spoilers, but the word “betrayal” comes up 1x in TSC. From Lyra, thinking about the Final Shore. Yeahhh, I don’t buy that Pullman had decided “somebody already told Mal about the prophecy” while writing TSC. This is a retcon. One that makes Mal look worse, too.

[Future note: Text-searching TRF didn’t find anything that made this feel more plausible, either.]

Pan opens up about Will: how they’re always going to be partly in love with him, and never talked to anyone about him. (Serafina knew, but it’s not like they talked.) Sad and sweet.

Check-in with Alice, still successfully escaping. Good.

Arriving at Gryphon HQ, Pan declares he and Mal are “honored guests from the Kingdom of Gold.” I was all set to note a second “daemons telling imaginative lies” example…then he tells Mal his tiny-gryphon friend came up with it. Sigh.

Mal is reminded of “bluffing about his importance” to the Guardian of the Thames in LBS. Pan eventually remembers his own experience bluffing to the King of the Armored Bears…aaaand doesn’t give himself any credit for helping with the story-spinning part. It’s all Lyra’s plan.

[Image: young Lyra telling a good story.]

More details of Tiny Gryphon’s backstory. The sorcerer who did the spell gets named. I’ve been spoiled that this is the name of a Canon Sorcerer Character. So much for my “she’s a juvenile with a good imagination for cover stories” theory.

Gryphons have human servants, including one “with his tongue cut out.” His daemon hides her face and “refuses” to communicate. Is she also mute? If you want to punish someone by silencing them, in a world where Everyone Has Two Bodies, you would make sure to get both tongues, right?

…Except, hold on, daemons can talk even if they’re a species without the physical ability to produce the phonemes! Butterfly and spider daemons can carry on conversations! We’ve seen daemons affected by other disabilities (paralysis, blindness), but is it even possible to block a daemon’s ability to talk?

Will Pullman explore any of this at all, in the whole rest of the book? I’m guessing no. But it would be nice to be wrong.

[Future note: I was not wrong.]

Our heroes talked up Mal’s skill as an artificer, so the Queen Gryphon says they can leave once they fix a treasure for her. Dramatic, heartbreaking reveal of the smashed pieces of the alethiometer.

(Hey, I’ve written that fic.)

The narration says it’ll clearly never work again. A pointless, tragic demise for what was a precious, irreplaceable treasure of the whole human race.

(…Iorek fixed the Knife, though. Could Mal have a hope after all?)

–

Chapter 12:

Malcolm checks his lodestone. This world went from “no such thing as cell phones” to “angry message about why aren’t you available every minute?” in, like, a day. Love that for then.

His boss also writes out all the exposition about Magisterium Secret Plots We Just Discovered, on this rock with no passcode that, if Malcolm had been captured by his enemies, literally anyone could have right now. Classic Oakley Street level of opsec!

(I checked in TSC, telephones exist here…but they’re still at the level of “need a switchboard operator.” Not advanced enough for pay phones to be in every city, or for every business to have a contact number, let alone every household.)

Malcolm gives the alethiometer a detailed exploration. Chances of successful repair rising.

Tells Pan that one of the reasons he’s traveling is “Money is going bad.” Is it??

There’s the economic turmoil caused by the decimated rose supply, but that’s a specific problem, not a general money problem.

The word “money” is never used in TSC. But I can’t see any reason Mal would lie about this to Pan. So…???

[Future note: My post-book theory is, some editor got to the eventual reveal of the Problem With Money, and told Pullman “buddy, this comes out of nowhere, it needs more buildup.” Instead of adding/rewriting any scenes to show the supposed Problem With Money, Pullman added a few sentences in here of Malcolm telling us there’s a Problem With Money, and decided that covered it.]

Malcolm: “Well, we have to do what we must do where we are, because we certainly can’t do it where we aren’t.”

Feels like a callback to Lee Scoresby: “The place you fight cruelty is where you find it. And the place you give help is where you see it most needed.”

[Image: Lee doing his best Soulful Eyes.]

Cut to Pope Delamare, complaining that Gottfried Brande invited himself to a church conference. Other person says Brande has lots of followers, Delamare corrects: “He doesn’t have followers, he has fans.”

Wonder if Pullman is speaking from his own experience as a celebrated author, here.

Odd that Delamare is so against Brande, when the Magisterium is so chummy with Talbot. These two authors get paralleled by the narrative all the time: their outlooks, their effects on readers. What’s the difference that is so key for Delamare?

[Future note: We never find out.]

Cut to Lyra, Asta, and recovering Ionedes on the Nice Bus.

Stray mention of an “amber-shaded anbaric lamp.” Pullman, you remembered the electric/anbaric term swap, but forgot the amber/electrum one…in the same sentence? (And no editor caught it?) Dude.

Leila and Ionedes confirmed exes. Also: she’s a physicist! Studied Rusakov particles too well, Church ruined her with a manufactured scandal, her mathematician boyfriend/co-professor mostly just got hit as collateral. I’m into this.

–

Chapter 13:

Brande’s presentation at PopeCon, from the POV of an Oakley Street spy in the audience. I mostly haven’t commented on the audiobook voice acting, but the voice Michael Sheen uses for “the bland priest who does Brande’s intro” is extremely funny. Well done.

[Image: the ominous TV-series aesthetic of a Magisterium meeting.]

OS spy notices something off about Brande and “his” daemon, Cosima, but can’t tell what.

People keep guessing “that’s not your daemon, is it?” about the Lyra-Asta and Malcolm-Pan duos, pretty quickly. I feel like it shouldn’t be that obvious…and sure enough, with Brande, it isn’t. Observers just think they’re dysfunctional and unhappy.

…And then it gets hella obvious, as Brande just bites it in the middle of his opening remarks! Poor Cosima is still there, alone, and for once everyone reacts with setting-appropriate horror, “as if a headless corpse was walking around”! Somebody throws up! Cosima runs to the door, and someone else yells “Let it out!”

This is such convenient timing, my new theory is “Brande’s real daemon was a captive, some enemy was using her to control him, they knew he was about to step out of line, so they killed him via her.”

She tries to talk. It’s not a European language, nobody in the room seems to recognize it. Who bets Brande never bothered to learn whatever language she speaks?

CCD agents show up. Somebody brings a dogcatching net. Cosima runs face-first into a wall. Poor dear.

OS observer’s own mouse daemon starts sobbing. He joins in later, but she starts. More “emotion is expressed more honestly through the daemon part.”

Delamare shows up to the cell where they’re holding Cosima. He’s my prime suspect in Brande’s death, obvs, but doesn’t seem to know much about her.

Tries a couple languages, concludes she speaks Persian. Considers touching her, to check if she really reacts like a daemon! His owl tells him off.

“Daemon as conscience.” Or “daemon as the part of the self that considers other people’s feelings.”

Delamere thinking “well, damn, now I’m sorry I skipped the lecture.” Hah.

Tries to offer medical treatment. Worldbuilding: medications and surgery can work on daemons. Also mentions “the talking cure.” Therapy, huh?

Delamare: Is there anything you want to say?
Cosima (now in German): Nothing

And she dies.

While alone with Delamare, oof. He’ll be prime suspect in her murder now, even though we know he actually didn’t do this one.

[Future note: Delamare never becomes a suspect. None of the characters ever find out anything else about Brande’s death, either! This genuinely intriguing mystery is never addressed again!]

Delamare plans to release the text of Brande’s presentation, “in his memory,” with some convenient rewrites.

His owl says it’s an incoherent mess that wouldn’t be worth the time to edit. (Insert your own ChatGPT jokes here.) Not playing the conscience this time, but the voice of caution and practicality.

–

Chapter 14:

Lyra on the bus, still hasn’t bought a Useful Phrases For Tourists book, so she ponders philosophy. Connects “imagination” to “intuition” and/or “recognizing patterns that might be coincidence.”

Looks at the myriorama, chats about it with Asta, who also has experience watching Hannah Relf use the alethiometer. They talk about the symbol meanings being “fixed,” while the pictures on the cards are more “dynamic” and better for “telling a story”.

Ehhh. Doubt. The alethiometer has told plenty of stories, you just need enough symbols in a row to convey all the details. Our alphabet has 26 symbols, and you can tell any story with those (plus a handful of punctuation).

[Image: child Pan watching Lyra work the alethiometer.]

Words might be a closer parallel, though. Thread-eating nerd tangent ahoy:

Simple English Wikipedia uses about 2K-3K different words, from a “Basic English” vocab set. The goal is to be accessible to ESL learners, people with learning disabilities, etc. That’s not fine-grained enough to have a technical conversation in a specific field, but apparently it’s enough for a functional explanation of Everything On Wikipedia (as tested so far).

Wikipedia also has “a list of dictionaries considered authoritative or complete by approximate number of total words”! The smallest is a conlang deliberately engineered to have as few root words as possible (and then go absolutely ham with compound words): Toki Pona, at 181.

Esperanto, a conlang created with the intention of being speakable, has 16,780 words in its biggest dictionary.

The alethiometer has 36 symbols, each with “thousands” of meanings. Let’s be as limiting as possible, and call it 2K each. That’s a minimum of 72,000 total. 3K meanings each brings us up to 108,000.

Biggest dictionaries of some languages I recognize as currently-spoken, and not reconstructed:

Venetian: 36,000
Thai: 40,840
Punjabi: 64,263
Spanish: 93,000

Yeah, I know not every possible word will be covered in a dictionary. That said, Hannah’s research included “investigating the deeper levels of alethiometer symbol meanings.” So not all of those are officially documented, either!

And I’m not done! In this chapter Lyra cites the Beehive as an example: the top meaning is “productive work.” Meanings can map to multi-word phrases!

Obviously a nuanced word in a natural language could be expressed with multiple symbols strung together, too.

The idea that this is “too rigid” or “not dynamic” is absurd. Especially from a writer, who has surely thought about “how language works” once or twice in his life.

When Lyra+Asta talked more about the myriorama, I figured they would quickly come to the conclusion of “these pictures are also symbols with layers of meaning.”

The art is old. Probably predates the invention of the bus. So you need some interpretation, such as, “the carriage” stands for transportation more generally, so it encompasses the bus. (Or the mag-lev high-speed rail. Or the spacecraft.)

But no, they don’t have that insight at all. The conversation moves on.

Asta is confident Mal could “make another alethiometer” if he had the tools and materials. Chance of Malcolm repairing Lyra’s is now approaching 100%, isn’t it.

Lyra gets out her little book of names for the first time since TSC, shows it to Asta. Calls these “names of people who can separate.” Has Pullman just forgotten that Makepeace was in there?

Mutual recap time.

Ionedes reports a Magisterium agent spotted on the train. Asta is surprised, thought they were moving “out of reach” of the Magisterium, especially with hearing “the Angelus bells.”

I looked those up, with a faint hope they would be a Muslim thing. Some hint that we’re moving into lands where a non-Christian religion has held off Church control enough to have a presence. But nope, it’s a Catholic thing. It was just one of the things Pope Calvin banned when he canon-diverged the Church.

Chapter finally over.

It was 16 minutes long. I’m not trying to get this distracted, but…

–

Chapter 15:

Malcolm takes the alethiometer mechanism out of the crushed gold case, tucks it aside. Yeah, that’s getting re-cased.

[Future note: Never resolved. By the end of the book, he’s still planning to try, but hasn’t actually started.]

They’re outside the enclosed stronghold when a storm comes up, and Malcolm briefly catches Pan to keep him from getting blown away. It’s awkward. I like it.

That kind of “incidental daemon touch for safety needs” is a realistic in-universe thing to address. And the reaction of I’m Not Mad But Wow This Is Too Awkward To Talk About rings very true.

A witch flies in. Gryphons try to fight her off. During the storm! Good action sequence (and more convincing than the witches-vs-bears fight that happened at some point in HDM).

[Image: a different witch, Ruta Skadi, flying through an earlier storm.]

It’s the same witch who had a cameo in LBS. Mal recognizes her…and has to repress a “help, she’s hot” reaction.

She’s here to address the gryphons on a concern of “the air is bad, the winds are failing.” Sounds like another manifestation of whatever caused “money is going bad”, the retconned-in problem Mal is supposedly on.

Our heroes conclude that The Problem affects what gryphons call “the inner kingdom.” Witch-Queen says this is also what humans call “the Secret Commonwealth.” I’m sure this is true because it’s a theme of the trilogy, but I have no idea how the characters deduced it. Are “wind” and “money” supposed to be mystical non-scientific concepts now? (I guess you could make a case for “money” being a social construct, and therefore “imaginary”. Air, not so much.)

[Future note: Other way around. Wind is a metaphor for imagination. Money is an anti-imagination force of evil.]

Gryphon Queen calls in a (human) court scientist. And, look, I was getting a bit of a “climate change crisis” vibe already…now this guy suggests a link to the burning of certain fuels, and Mal infers it’s about the Church’s “using explosives to melt the portals” project. (His boss texted him that exposition.)

I was thinking “a few dozen explosions, even really toxic ones, doesn’t seem like enough to cause noticeable effects on the global atmosphere.”

Then Mal makes an inference: the windows themselves had airflow. Maybe the mass closure is cutting off the whole planet’s ventilation.

so is Pan going to mention how it also protects the world from losing something important (titular, even) or how the whole reason he and Lyra accepted they could never see their beloved Will again was because leaving even one window open was catastrophically dangerous for the multiverse or

Nnnnope

Plus: Mal makes a rousing speech that they should unite to oppose their enemies. Including TP, a company “whose only goal is to make money.”

This argument is to the gryphons. Whose established POV is “anything that gets us more gold is correct and okay.”

Hope nobody tells them gold is money!

–

Bonus note:

A bunch of characters have mentioned “the alkahest” in various contexts. Several are searching for it, or for info about it. Not a single one has said what it is. Or given any indication of where/how you would try to find it.

Finally looked it up. Wikipedia says it’s a theoretical material that alchemists tried to produce. Like the Philosopher’s Stone, but instead of transmuting one element to another, this can dissolve any element into its component parts. A universal solvent.

So far, there’s…no obvious way this would fit into the plot. Nobody’s given any indication what they want it for.

Now that all the hero-coded characters are lining up on the side of “closing inter-world windows is bad,” my best guess is “alkahest could be used to dissolve open the melted-closed windows.” (It makes at least as much sense as “using explosives to make openings smaller.”)

[Image: young Lyra in front of a portal Asriel just exploded open]

From the sound, I figured the term was Arabic. But Wiki also says “nobody knows where Paracelsus got this word, no theories have real Arabic words that match it, there’s a real chance he just made up Something Arabic-Sounding because it came off as serious and mystical.”

Serious and noble scholarship here, folks. Making up foreign-y words to sound cool: an ancient human tradition.

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2026/02/11/erin-reads-the-rose-field-part-2a-chapters-9-15/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=9895

Posted by Erin Ptah

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/recs-of-nice-things-marvel-a-for-angel-sporadic-phantoms-cosmic-princess-kaguya/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=9886

[Youtube] Sir_Superhero’s backstory breakdown of Wonder Man in the comics. I only ever saw scattershot appearances of the guy, never knew his whole deal, so this was cool and enlightening. (Haven’t actually watched the MCU show yet, I’ll be curious to see which parts they keep.)

AMA with Jed MacKay on League of Comic Geeks. Fun insights and tidbits about the Moon Knight comics, along with the other projects he’s working on.

[Youtube] A for Angel, a pilot for Cartoon Network that I guess was stuck in rights/development hell, and finally got released? By the creator of the webcomic Angel’s Advocate (also started but not continued, maybe because of the cartoon being in production), and you can see a lot of the character designs coming through, although the plot and worldbuilding seem pretty different. Charming and adorable.

Sporadic Phantoms, a fictional true-crime podcast…set in a 2020-AU version of the Animorphs universe. There’s something weird about The Sharing, these amateur journalists are starting to think it’s a cult, and they’re here to investigate! I’m only a few episodes in, but the continuity bonuses are [chef’s kiss].

For most of the time I was watching Cosmic Princess Kaguya, I was thinking “Well, this is cute. The animation is excellent, the designs are a lot of fun…the plot is pretty basic, and the video-game fight sequences do not need to go on for this long, but it’s still a good time.”

And then I got to The Reveal — maybe 20 minutes from the end — and thought “…wait, hold up, I might need to rewatch the whole thing now??”

Somewhere in the middle, I had actually noticed that [Character] was animated with an expression that’s very characteristic of [Other Character], and idly thought “huh, maybe they’re connected somehow.” How many more hints like that did I miss? How many can I catch now, if I watch with The Reveal in mind?

Not sure if there’s much else I can say without spoiling it! But yeah, quite good. If you like grumpy/sunshine canon f/f, with internet friendships, weird fantasy age gaps, the power of expressing yourself through virtual avatars, and the power of music, don’t miss this one.

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/recs-of-nice-things-marvel-a-for-angel-sporadic-phantoms-cosmic-princess-kaguya/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=9886

Posted by Erin Ptah

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2026/02/05/erin-reads-the-rose-field-part-1-chapters-1-8/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=9842

Library hold for The Rose Field came in. The TOC divides it into 3 parts, so this is the liveblog for Part One.

Previous HDM-related posts here. To start from the earliest Book of Dust reaction posts, see The Reaction Posts of Dust on AO3.

I’m going in mostly-cold. Got spoiled for a few individual details, but the rest, including basically all the actual plot, is a mystery.

When doing the original reactions, I usually don’t stop and rewind the audiobook to make sure all the quotes are exact. For this roundup, I have an ebook version I can text-search, so I’ll try to correct them. Carefully, because I’ve only read chapters 1-17 in total, and don’t want to spoil myself by seeing search results from chapters 18-36.

For visual interest, I’ll throw in some screencaps of relevant people/places/items from the HDM TV series.

Chapters 1-8 ahead:

Chapter 1:

Picking right back up with Lyra meeting Nur Huda, the teen girl who traveled with Pan, in the ruined City of the Moon. (Nur Huda was named in honor of one of the Grenfell Tower victims…and her name is still perfect for the series, it means “guiding light.”)

Lyra says “I’ve been following [Pan] all this way.” Seems like that’s just supposed to be the plot now? She’s very unsurprised that this random encounter knows Pan.

Voices, spirits of exposition in the ruins. Goes into an alethiometer mindset to listen, but no need for alethiometer or myriorama, they talk directly to her. Asks about the red building (after her more-important questions about Pan), and they immediately go “yeah, that has a window to a different world, where the Specialest Roses that make Amber Spyglass oil are from.”

Again: I’ve written that fic. Pullman, did you read my fic? Be honest, now.

Lyra has to rescue Nur Huda’s daemon, a jerboa. Not much of a quest: he’s a short walk away. In a cage, but the captor is asleep when Lyra gets there.

[Future note while editing: Still waiting to found out who the captor was. Or how he got here. Or what he was doing. Seems like it should be related to the whole Secret Daemon-Trafficking Industry — maybe he waits at the legendary “place where solo daemons end up” looking for victims to kidnap and sell? — but Lyra doesn’t investigate this, her POV doesn’t even speculate about it, the book just moves on.]

Wants to use the alethiometer needle hand for cutting. Thinks it’s the same metal as the Subtle Knife. Did we know that? Both devices were made around the same time, both in mysterious circumstances, but I don’t remember this being an explicit parallel.

The alethiometer faceplate just…unscrews open? Backwards, like the message-acorn in LBS, but still! This seems painfully insecure.

Do I even need to say that “dismantling this incredibly valuable, intricate machine that nobody in the world knows how to rebuild” seems like a terrible dangerous idea?

[Screencap: TV version of the alethiometer. Different design, no faceplate, presumably because “CGI moving gears” are easier to animate when they’re not also under CGI glass.]

The three regular hands are pointing to the Camel, the Angel, and the Walled Garden. As if Lyra was in the middle of asking it a plot-relevant question.

Captor wakes, grabs most of the alethiometer. A giant bird, foreshadowed repeatedly as a local danger, swoops in and grabs the captor. Nur Huda gets her daemon back, and they just…walk off alone into the desert. No mention of supplies or anything. Presented like we’re supposed to feel good and relieved, but look, this is fully just a setup for them to die of dehydration.

Or maybe exposure. Lyra rejoins her guide, and he immediately says “you need to sleep now, here’s a bunch of blankets for how cold it’s about to get.”

[Future note: I’m mentally comparing this to the rescue of the caged and severed child-daemons from Bolvangar. Child Lyra passed them into the care of the witches. We never saw them again, or got any update on what their fate was — but it still felt like a satisfying resolution, because we could trust that Serafina’s people had the knowledge/resources make sure they were safe. This poor teenager only has herself.]

–

Chapter 2:

Back to Oakley Street (what’s left of it). Sebastien Makepeace shows up, gives them a pair of resonance stones: the quantum communicators used by the Gallivespians, not generally known in this world, which is why he got them cheap at a curiosity shop. Too bad he didn’t find them in time to give to the travelers in the last book, huh?

“I haven’t got time to tell you how. You’ll have to discover how to use them yourself.” Cop-out.

He asks about something the exposition spirits mentioned to Lyra last chapter. Don’t know the spelling, not looking it up right now. (Is it just going to be the Philosopher’s Stone? It is, isn’t it.)

(Or maybe it’s going to bring Alchemist Magician Dad’s mystery engine back into plot relevance. Not holding my breath, though.)

[Future note: It’s the alkahest. More on that later.]

Cut to Pope Delamare, with an agent in the Alps, examining a window. Back at the office, the agent reports that he’s seen 17 of these in person, all around the world, and heard of 8 more.

A new Knifebearer on the scene, to go with the new Amber Spyglassers? Or were these on the to-close list at the end of TAS, and the angels just haven’t gotten to them yet?

If it’s the second…oof. Way to undercut the tragedy at the end of TAS.

[Screencap: Lyra and Will’s final kiss, through a portal between their worlds, which they were told they couldn’t possibly leave open.]

The details of the individual portals are fascinating. I want a book that’s just this guy’s travelogue. Obviously Delamare orders him murdered, along with anybody he talked to about it, and then goes “bring to me a plan for destroying every one of those openings.”

Maybe you shouldn’t murder the window expert until after you figure out how to destroy them? Considering how many of them have existed for (reportedly) centuries, maybe they’re not so easy to destroy? Come on, buddy.

Cut to Pan, traveling. Daemon worldbuilding: his senses are “not necessarily distinct from one another,” he “existed normally in and out of a state of synesthesia.” This is such a pivot from how the last book leaned into the mundane physicality of daemons. I’m into it.

[Future note: …so of course, it hasn’t come up again at all.]

Pan is on his way to the red building now. Did Nur Huda pass that on to Lyra? I thought she didn’t, but maybe I missed it? Definitely no explanation for why Pan didn’t stay to meet Lyra. Or to help with rescuing Nur Huda’s daemon. What was so urgent that he couldn’t bother being involved with that?

[Future note: I did just miss the first part, yeah. The quote from Nur Huda is “[Pan] said he was going ahead of you…To the east, where the roses come from, that’s what he said.”]

Fights a bird, to save what turns out to be a tiny griffin. She claims she’s small because of a curse, does Pullman want us to take that at face value? Because I’m suspicious that this is a kid, telling a cover story.

[Future note: Found out later that the print text spells it “gryphon,” whoops. Also…it’s becoming A Pattern that I keep going “does Pullman expect us to take this speech/narration/observation at face value, without giving it any deeper thought or interpretation?” And TRF’s answer keeps being “yes.”]

Finally looked up the mythological simurgh (the foreshadowed Giant Bird). Sometimes they’re just painted as bird-y birds, but “head of a dog, claws of a lion” is also on the table. So, they’re different legends about the same species, right? Maybe with regional variations in appearance?

Only halfway through the chapter and I’ve gotta start a new thread. This is shaping up to be a long heckin book.

Chapter 2, continued:

Full-size griffins chase off other scavenging birds, confront Pan. He says “I want to thank you for fighting off those birds, whose name I can’t remember.” Valid, buddy.

[Future note: They’re called Oghâb-gorgs. All the search results for that term are from HDM, so it seems Pullman didn’t base this on an existing myth, it’s a new invention.]

Ask what he’s looking for, and why he expects to find it in the red building. “Well, I’ve already searched all of Europe for it, and didn’t find it.” Okay, pal, settle down, you went to one (1) city.

Pan: (heartfelt speech about defending imagination, which he now thinks comes from the red building, against its enemies)
Griffin 1, aside to Griffin 2: uhhh, what is “imagination”?

Look, I’m connecting some dots here (one of the things that generates Dust is conscious beings using their imagination, the red building is a source of roses whose oil lets you see Dust), but I have no idea how or whether Pan is connecting those dots. It doesn’t feel like he is being any more reasonable or well-planned than he was about the “idk, maybe Brande has her imagination?” stage of the journey. Which got him nowhere.

[Screencap: TV Mary, using amber treated with oil — not from roses, from a different otherworldly plant — as a Dust-viewing lens.]

Cut to Malcolm, last seen on a train with a gunshot wound, now in a prison infirmary after being found suspiciously passed-out. Professional spy here, folks.

…Okay, there’s a scene of the officials thinking “He’s dead!” because Malcolm’s daemon is no longer in sight. That’s clever, and a nice in-universe thought process.

But the one who’s paying attention immediately clocks he’s still breathing. No clever escape here.

Some credit for Mal: he gives a reasonable cover story even while woozy from blood loss. Makes like a mystery person shot him, and then put him already-passed-out on a random train. And his daemon? It’s a normal, well-documented PTSD symptom for her to vanish temporarily. She’ll fade back in.

–

Chapter 3:

Lyra describes the stolen alethiometer as “gone forever,” but also feels “a curious relief” about it. Odd, she never felt burdened by having it on this trip, she just didn’t use it much. Still has the super-sharp needle, and keeps it in…a pocket? That’s just asking to have it poke a hole in the fabric and disappear forever.

[Future note: For once, this is a problem the character will notice reasonable quickly, and take steps to fix.]

Tells her guide some lies about previous chapters instead of describing Nur Huda. She doesn’t think “this guy is sus, I better cover for the kid,” she just kinda does it. Reflects on how her lies aren’t convincing anymore…why risk it, then?

Cute translation moment when the guide, Abdel Ionedes, says “I don’t know the English word for (griffin),” them offers the French…and it’s “griffon.”

…Everything about Ionedes is delightful. He’s my favorite character right now. Moral shadiness and all.

Cut to Mal, sick and knocked-out on morphine. Kind of a nice parallel to Lyra, starting book 3 as a captive being drugged.

Cut to Pope Delamare, planning a war. Using TP, officially just a pharma company, to veer around military regulations. The political commentary is unsubtle. Even before they literally say “police action.”

[Future note: Company’s full name is Thuringia Potash. It gets abbreviated as TP in the book too, I didn’t just come up with that to avoid guessing the spelling. Thuringia is a place-name, Potash is a type of mineral resource.]

Cut to the colonel Delamare sent to blow up the portals.

Him Me
“Killing the portal expert before we figure out how to handle the portals seems like a dumb idea”

Weird moment: the colonel thinks he’s not much for analogies, “that was what daemons were for.” Trying to portray daemons as “the part of the self that considers and appreciates non-literal things.”

It fits with what Pullman is trying to do…but I don’t buy that this dichotomy is supported by the actual human-daemon interactions so far in the series! Earlier Lyra also thought “Pan would have helped me lie better, maybe that’s what he meant by imagination,” which is clearly meant to push the same theme…and isn’t supported by past interactions either! Was Kid Lyra’s lie-spinning ever done with consultation from Pan?

The one that sticks with me is “Lyra pretends to be an armored bear’s daemon,” where Pan is explicitly hiding and being as quiet as possible, so he doesn’t give the game away. And that didn’t slow down Lyra’s storytelling at all.

[Screencap: little Lyra posing as a bear!daemon, not letting Iofur Raknison intimidate her.]

Earlier in this same book, Mal spun himself a cover story in the hospital while Asta was gone. Didn’t seem to slow him down, either.

And, uh, the “just blow it up” approach worked? Ish? Turned the full-size window into a bunch of tiny cracks, like shredding a full-size quilt to pieces.

This is the opposite of what explosions did to interdimensional cracks/windows in TAS. Genuinely don’t know if that indicates this didn’t work as well as it appeared…or if it just means Pullman forgot his own continuity.

Asta found an Oakley Street agent, so Mal is rescued. Gets one of the paired resonance stones, too. Handy.

–

Chapter 4:

Lyra reflects some more on losing the alethiometer. Feelings: “her rucksack was lighter; she couldn’t bring herself to use the word burden, but she was certainly free from something.”

Still, wishes she could ask it what to do next: even without the reference books or the New Method, she knows she could’ve gotten some info from it, based on her own learned knowledge of the symbols.

If only we had ever seen her do that! Even once, in this whole series! Dammit, Pullman, that was something I genuinely looked forward to seeing in a book about grown-up Lyra, and I don’t think you ever even wrote her trying!

She makes a first attempt to use the myriorama instead, but with no luck (yet).

Packs up the needle more safely. Good.

Finally leans into her “I am a traveling witch” backstory. Actually makes herself a circlet to complete the look! She gives Ionedes a role as her court magician, which he agreeably and cheerfully takes to, because he’s the best character. Angrily chastising the wait staff for not showing due respect to his Queen! (In French, so I didn’t catch every word, but that was the gist )

[Editing in the full quote, since I love it so much: “Vous nous prenez pour des MENDIANTS?” Ionides said in high indignation. “Écoutez, espèce d’imbécile. Voici sa majesté la reine Tatiana Iorekova, qui gouverne le royaume entier de Novaya Zemlya, et moi qui suis son sorcier particulier, le gardien de ses finances, le président de conseil de ses affaires d’état, le Maître Parathanasius!”]

[Future note: Lyra’s witchsona name in TSC was “Tatiana Asrielovna,” using Asriel’s name as a patronymic. The narration never says how she felt about that…but here, without comment, she switches to “Iorekova”. Replacing Asriel with the worthier Bear Dad Iorek Byrnison.]

[Screencap: Lyra and fox!Pan cuddling with Iorek.]

Do I even need to specify that Pan’s absence has no effect on Lyra’s ability to fall into a role here?

…The café owner, who Lyra came to see, does clock her pretty soon in the meeting. But it’s because he knows Bud, and other relevant people, so he’s heard that Lyra Silvertongue was traveling. It’s not because her disguise was bad.

Asking for intel on the rose trade. Shows him one of Farder Coram’s gold coins, which is “from High Brazil.” Like her combat stick. Wonder if the “Hy-Brasil” pun will become relevant.

Owner has more intel about purchasing the Specialest Roses from the red building. Reveals that they’re a special color: “Between red and yellow, but not orange.”

I’m picturing it as something like olo: a color you can only see if a precise wavelength of light is machine-projected in a specific way on your retinas. A manifestation of how otherworld materials reflect light in fundamentally different ways.

(I’ll be pretty sad if it turns out it’s just amber.)

Café owner also has intel on Ionedes: he was a math professor, felled by scandal, went on to become a renowned spy. Pullman kinda scrambles for an explanation of “sure, I recognized him, and will talk about that in a crowded café where we’ve already drawn attention, but he’s still an awesome gifted spy that nobody else would recognize.”

Owner also says Ionedes has never worked with the Magisterium. Which I think we’re supposed to take as trustworthy exposition, and not suspect “hey, maybe he’s a gifted-enough spy that nobody knows he’s worked with the Magisterium.”

[Future note: So far, none of the at-face-value exposition here has been contradicted or disproven.]

Men from the Mountains: (attacking + destroying rose gardens, everyone local fears them)
Magisterium agents: (threatening + locking up + shooting rose growers, saying roses have the stench of the devil)
Café owner: Something is going wrong with the rose trade. It’s very subtle

…Sure, buddy

The café owner has shares in a bus company. For the foreseeable future of her journey, Lyra is getting complementary rides on AU Middle Eastern Greyhound. Handy.

Quick cut to the research station where the murdered guy from TSC worked. Shenanigans are afoot.

–

Chapter 5:

Lyra asks Ionedes about “the gaps between the good numbers,” which the spirits in the Blue Hotel mentioned. I checked Wikipedia, and “good numbers” isn’t an established math term in our world, so the ex-math professor won’t have a precise definition. Gets him chatting, though.

Lyra meanders into “what if Good Numbers describe the kind of numbers we need to mathematically represent a field unknown to current physicists?” Mention of the Rusakov field. Mention of the Secret Commonwealth (the phrase hasn’t been a recurring motif in this book, this might be the first time it’s come up?), pondering if that could be a field. (So, that’s definitely the Rose Field, huh.)

[Future note: I double-checked, it’s the third use of the phrase. First use, Lyra wondered if it was related to the Blue Hotel exposition ghosts. Second use, she outright asked if they were part of it.]

Okay. Pullman has already been sloppy about his theme of “the Secret Commonwealth refers to things that aren’t provable with logic/literal evidence/pure reason,” trying to make it include lots of Lyra’s mundane experiences. Ones that are backed up with just as much physical/sensory evidence as anything else she’s been through.

Are we throwing “also, it’s quantifiable with modern science” on top of that?

He already wrote out the alethiometer, while giving Lyra a deck of cards that do functionally the same thing. Is he pulling another swap, bored with exploring “the mysteries of human consciousness and souls can be observed/studied via Rusakov fields,” so he’s replacing it with “learning how the mysteries of human imagination can be observed/studied via Rose fields”?

Orrrrr is this actually laying the groundwork to do a whole new different thing? TBD.

Pope Delamare has a secret meeting with Men from the Mountains reps. Wants to hire them directly, cut out the TP Pharma middlemen. Did we even know in TSC that he had middlemen? Not surprised he doesn’t like it.

Tells one of his people to get intel on one of their agents who caught his eye. She’s a former academic. How many characters in academia (currently or formerly) is our cast up to now…?

–

Chapter 6:

Malcolm goes to a different café, by a closed TP building, and poses as “an engineer who was supposed to meet someone there” to ask the proprietor about the closing.

So, look, it’s a little convenient the gunshot wound suddenly doesn’t trouble him at all. But in general this scene is really nice: the perfect intersection of “the kind of spycraft Mal is supposed to be good at” and “the kind of spycraft Pullman is actually good at writing.”

(Because I’m watching for this now: no, Asta is not involved in Mal’s story-spinning.)

Lyra dozes off in a garden…and gets jumped by Olivier! I was just wondering what that guy was up to! First time we’ve seen him all book.

Between Lyra’s bad dreams, the attack, and maybe some bleedover from whatever IRL Pan is doing right now, she has a bit of a nightmare/flashback about Bolvangar…about Pan getting grabbed…and she makes a grab for the wing of Olivier’s hawk!

It’s just for a second, and it still hurts him enough that all he can do is flee. We cut away from Lyra before she has a chance to reflect. Wonder if “why didn’t she do that to the attackers on the train?” will finally come up.

[Note from the future: 10+ chapters later, it has not come up.]

Next: Alice!

Still in government custody, still being an absolute pain to her captors. Second-best character, easily. (Ionedes is still top, sorry.)

Interrogator asks her about Mal and Lyra. Tries to insinuate Mal is a predator who groomed Lyra as a teen student, and has now run off with her. Alice doesn’t credit that for a second. I’m noting contrasts: Gerard Bonneville in LBS was an academic who really preyed on teen girls, and lost his job over it. Ionedes also lost his job over an unspecified scandal. Was that one real, or made up to get rid of him?

Also noting that “manipulate people with scandals and blackmail” was a stated Oakley Street tactic. How many of their efforts were legit? Were any of them as fabricated as this?

…Anyway, Alice breaks out of the building, steals a truck, and makes a daring high-speed escape. Good chapter.

–

Chapter 7:

Mal accidentally figures out how the resonating stones work: you write on one, the indentations disappear as they get transferred to the other. (By sheer luck, he was doodling on his stone while his boss was looking at the other.)

In the HDM TV series, these were a fancy CGI effect: more like a video call with visible faces. I get how that plays better on TV, but I like this version feels a lot more grounded and realistic.

[Screencap: TV version of a Gallivespian spy using this equipment to talk to Lord Asriel.]

Ionedes shows up to talk to Malcolm!

And, uh, Mal makes no effort to hide his identity or obscure any of his backstory.

There’s no good reason for this, Lyra isn’t there, Ionedes doesn’t name her at first, and nobody else Mal trusts has showed up to vouch for this random stranger he just met. It’s as if Mal knows “it’ll only slow down the plot if this guy has to work for his into, better just give him all the exposition upfront.”

Ionedes claims his career-ending scandal was manufactured by the Magisterium, because he was making heretical discoveries. In…math. (Not doubting him, ftr. This is very on-brand for the Church.)

Okay, I’m getting a little frustrated at “some guy shows up out of nowhere, starts a conversation about extremely volatile secret topics the Church has been murdering people over, and Mal seems to be responding to this whole thing as trustworthy exposition, with no possible ulterior motives, that he doesn’t need to be suspicious about at all.”

Ionedes is still great, at least.

Hands Mal the text of “a speech Pope Delamare is planning to give, decrying the heresy of the imagination.”

Can that be legit? I’m sure Delamare hasn’t used the word “imagination” on-page here. He’s talked about his war on facts. Truth. Knowledge. Inconvenient science discoveries.

[Future note: Still haven’t gotten to the “giving the speech” scene, so I don’t know for sure how this plays out. But I have a guess.]

Ionedes takes Mal to rendezvous with Lyra. Meanwhile, Olivier limps back to home base after his own…uh, rendezvous with Lyra.

A staffer thinks his daemon’s wing is broken. Seriously? Lyra grabbed it that hard? (Pullman, you do remember how daemon-touching is intensely painful and violating all by itself, even without breaking any bones, right…?)

This makes it a parallel with Lyra’s broken hand, though. That’s a good touch.

–

Chapter 8:

The new “academic Delamare wanted investigated” character is back. Tried to search her name to make sure I spelled it right, but I’m seeing “Leila Pervani” and “Parvani” about equally.

[Future note: Ebook text says Pervani.]

Either way, charming Leila and her pretty snake daemon are here to chat with Olivier.

Says about his daemon’s injury, “These things heal themselves, but it’ll be painful for a while.” Hm.

Olivier passes on the exposition he got from Ionedes at the end of TSC. (At the time, I thought he was still on the run from the Magisterium? But now he seems to be staying at their safehouse, having visits from their other agents, and not worrying about it. Did we actually see when that changed…?)

Lyra turns out to be in the gardens at the nearby [High?] Brazilian embassy. So we have Malcolm and Lyra getting a reunion in a garden. Leaning awfully hard on the Will parallels, here.

[Screencap: Split-screen of Lyra and Will, at their annual “reunion”, each in their own world’s version of the Botanic Gardens.]

Asta runs ahead of the still-limping Mal to get to Lyra, so quickly that Ionedes actually notices an unnatural distance between then.

This hits directly on a point I’ve been pondering for a while here: Daemons are bad for lying. Daemons are the part of a person that’s more inclined to express their honest feelings, even if it goes against what they want to admit, or the image they want to project. Marisa Coulter and Gerard Bonneville both exemplified this! The human had a charming, attractive presentation. The daemon gave away how violent, angry, and contemptuous they were underneath.

And this is the nicer version of that. Mal doesn’t want to show the depth of how caring and worried he is. But “he cares enough to override his own sense of self-preservation” comes out through the part of him that is Asta.

If Pullman had stuck to the “emotions vs. pure reason” theme, this would all line up. (If only Lyra had been shown struggling with emotional repression, and Pan thought somebody stole her feelings!)

But when you add a “lies and storytelling vs. literal truths” theme, Pullman is writing daemons on the opposite of the side he wants to associate them with.

Mal touches Lyra in her sleep. Lyra, who got attacked mid-nap just last chapter, immediately flips out. Good job, buddy.

Armed authorities track them down…and, moments later, a bunch of griffins track them down. Mal thinks they’re “the same order of creature” as the faeries in LBS, because he knows that’s one of the themes of the book. Cliffhanger where he gets yoinked, without Asta — okay, this could be fun, setting up daemonless Lyra and humanless Asta to function as a team for a while.

[Future note: This is, in fact, going to be a fun dynamic. An optimistic note to end on.]

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2026/02/05/erin-reads-the-rose-field-part-1-chapters-1-8/

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Posted by Erin Ptah

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/sky-is-blue-water-is-wet-ice-needs-to-be-abolished/

http://erinptah.wordpress.com/?p=9784

Justice for Keith Porter Jr., shot by an ICE agent who wasn’t even on duty.

Justice for Geraldo Lunas Campos, killed by a guard while imprisoned in an ICE facility.

Justice for Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz, died while imprisoned by ICE, from health issues they only made token efforts to treat.

Justice for Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres, died while in ICE custody, they did get him to a hospital but not soon enough.

Justice for Parady La, died while imprisoned by ICE, from a medical crisis they didn’t even pretend to treat.

Justice for Heber Sanchez Domínguez, died while imprisoned by ICE, under suspiciously-unclear circumstances.

Justice for Victor Manuel Diaz, died while imprisoned by ICE, under suspiciously-unclear circumstances.

A US attorney in the Minnesota courts, who only didn’t quit because her job includes processing the release orders for ICE’s onslaught of detentions, “told U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell on Tuesday, “I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep.”” (Since then, she’s been fired. Commentary from rahaeli: “I hope the poor woman gets her 24h of sleep before filing her whistleblower retaliation lawsuit“)

Elected Democrats are actually fighting this. It’s a shame they don’t have the numbers to just out-vote every single atrocity Republicans are hot for. Can this be the year the voters figure that out, and finally elect more Democrats?

As if all of the above wasn’t enough reason, here’s some more: “Democrats Successfully Strip All Anti-Trans Riders From Final Appropriations Bills“

Can we vote out the party that keeps designing the anti-trans riders in the first place? Please?

https://erinptah.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/sky-is-blue-water-is-wet-ice-needs-to-be-abolished/

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