And Then I Read: THE ROSE FIELD by Philip Pullman

Cover and illustrations by Chris Wormell

Philip Pullman published a trilogy of epic fantasy novels under the trilogy title of His Dark Materials in the late 1990s: The Golden Compass (1995), The Subtle Knife (1997) and The Amber Spyglass (2000). I particularly loved the first book with its creative alternate Oxford and beyond, where each person has a sort of spirit companion animal that’s a part of themselves. I wasn’t as thrilled with the other two, but I recently reread them all and liked all three better. In 2017 Pullman published the first book of a new trilogy under the title of The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage. I thought it was the best fantasy novel I had read in decades. That book is a prequel to His Dark Materials, taking Lyra, the protagonist, back to infancy, and introducing Malcolm and Alice who reluctantly join forces to save baby Lyra from evil forces. The second half of that book is an amazing, thrilling adventure through a flooded England from Oxford to London in a canoe. The second book, The Secret Commonwealth, came out in 2019, now continuing the story after His Dark Materials. Lyra and her animal companion or daemon Pan have grown to dislike each other, and Pan has left to Lyra to “find her imagination.” In this book the troubles and dangers multiply for all the characters, and Pan, Lyra, and Malcolm are all traveling east with difficulty toward places in the desert at the edge of China. I enjoyed it, but not as much, since the characters I liked were all having such a tough time. Kind of typical of the middle book of a trilogy, I guess.

The third book, The Rose Field, came out just recently. I decided to reread the first two books before this one, and all three are long books, but they held my interest. In the third book, some resolutions are finally reached, characters are reunited, and mysteries explained. But it’s not the kind of story that wraps things up neatly with a bow. Many things remain for the characters and their world to work out, trouble is not gone, merely transferred. I kind of like that, it felt more realistic, as did the reveal about the most dangerous threat to Lyra’s world. I still feel satisfied, and it kept me thinking about what might happen next for some time. Well worth reading and recommended.

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