Ending Problem

[Marie]

The last part of the book was...
"And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?" "The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra.

I was thinking of this ending so much. How in the world would they build "The Republic of Heaven"? She didn't have her power over the alethiometer and Will lost his subtle knife. Philip Pullman shouldn't have ended the book with a cliff hanger. These are the questions I want answered...
1. What happened to Will???
2. What happened to Lyra???
3. Did they ever meet together with their plan???
4. Did Lyra and Pantalaimon ever build "The Republic of Heaven"???
5. If the answer to number 4 is correct, how did they do it...
6.Did Lyra ever regain her power over the alethiometer???
7. What happened to Mary Malone???

So.... What did the rest of you think?

[Mitali]

That's not a cliffhanger. It's just ending on a note of optimism, and also shows how Lyra is a person who is confident and ambitious.

As for the rest of the questions ... except for maybe 7, I don't think it's necessary for any of them to be answered. If Pullman had tried to answer them all, he'd have to write 3 sequels. Not that I'd mind reading more books by him - but I don't think they're necessary. There are some things that can be left to the readers' imaginations.

[Marie]

I just hate when you have to imagine what happens next. I would prefer for Philip Pullman to write 3 sequels and continue the series...

[Marie]

And ... If you read "Lyra's Oxford", it says that the story happened 2 years after she and Will separated. And she never built "The Republic of Heaven"...
And since they wrote about Lyra, Philip Pullman should have at least made another book about Will. Will is such a mysterious and fierce character, I would have liked to know what happened next in his life.

[Marie]

Another question of mine is that the almighty never died, right? Only Metatron was thrown into the abyss along with Lord Asriel and Mrs.Coulter...

[Raptori]

Marie wrote: "Another question of mine is that the almighty never died, right? Only Metatron was thrown into the abyss along with Lord Asriel and Mrs.Coulter..."

The Authority - worshipped by the sentient creatures of the multiverse as god - was the old angel in the crystal ball who faded away with a sigh after Will freed him in the final battle. He was actually a fraud - he was the first angel to come into being, and lied to those who came after him when he told them he was the creator.

I agree with Mitali - there's no need to continue the story. If you didn't end it somewhere, you'd have to kill every single character at once. While I'd love to read more about them, and the ending was heart-wrenching, it'd be disappointing if he cobbled together a second-rate story just to appease the fans.

[Charbeli]

Marie wrote: "The last part of the book was...
"And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?" "The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra.

I was thinking of this ending so much. How in the world would they bu..."

I thought about the ending a lot. I even cried. I wanted Lyra and Will to be together for the rest of their lives, since they had experienced so much. There are parts in the last book that let the readers know Will lived a long time. It says he remembers the taste of Lyra's lips even though it had happened years ago. I don't think is a loose end, it's just what mostly happens with first love: it ends, but we remember it. We remember the first kiss, the smell of the person we loved, the way he or she laughed.

It wasn't fair for the children to live what the lived, so the fact that they have a chance to live a normal life excludes another world and the love of a teenager who isn't from the same world. They learn to be free and to make choices, and to live with the consequences of those decisions, that's why the daimonions embrace a permanent form.

So, in the end, I think this was the best ending Pullman could have given to those sad, brave and smart characters, to move on.

[Vicky]

Marie wrote: "The last part of the book was...
"And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?" "The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra.

I was thinking of this ending so much. How in the world would they bu..."

For 1 & 2: we know what happened to Lyra thanks to 'Lyra's Oxford' (and tbh it's not surprising she didn't build the Republic of Heaven, as she's, what, thirteen in the Amber Spyglass and fifteen in Lyra's Oxford?). We don't know what happened to Will because it's the end of the series and Pullman doesn't want to tell us and is leaving it /up to our imaginations/. That's why people have headcanons and that sort of thing. He probably went back to his mother, and I suspect sorted out the problem with the men that she had (he won't be scared of them anymore).

3 - no, they never met up again, as they had to go back to their own worlds and stay there otherwise they'd die a slow death. Perhaps, /perhaps/, they found a natural window in each of their worlds that lead to the same third world they could meet up in. But I doubt that, it is very unlikely. Every year they each go to their bench in Oxford and sit, that being the closest they can ever get again.

4 & 5 - It depends on what you think the 'Republic of Heaven' means. My headcanon is she liased with angels and other creatures of Heaven and began to help rebuild Heaven's society, but that it wasn't completed by the time she died (she's only human after all).

6 - her "power over the aliethiometer" was a natural grace that allowed her to access the meanings of the symbols without having studied them. When she found she had lost that, she was told that now she would have to be like the others who read the aliethiometer and academically learn the symbols' meanings again. So, if by "regain her power" you mean learn to read the aliethiometer again, then it is entirely up to your own opinion. As of two year's later (Lyra's Oxford) she hadn't seemed to, but in the future, who knows? Is she the type to sit down with books and learn the pre-developed meanings? Or does she carry it around with her and develop her own meanings for each of the symbols (as we saw with Mary, Dust is willing to work with individuals to develop their own symbol sets)? Imo, she does, over her lifetime, relearn the symbols and how to read the aliethiometer, but it is never quite as adept as she was before.

7. That would be interesting to know. I wonder whether she stayed with the mulefa, studying and learning and slowly wasting away from living in another world, and no long before she died she gathered up all her research, said goodbye to the mulefa, and walked off to the world of the dead herself.

But basically, the answer to all your questions is - decided for yourself. Pullman has not (yet) given us anymore to work with, so there are no answers (there are, however, hints of a fourth in the series that explores what happened to Serafina Pekalla, how Lee met Iorek, and the like).

[Shubham]

Marie wrote: "I just hate when you have to imagine what happens next. I would prefer for Philip Pullman to write 3 sequels and continue the series..."

I think that would be necessary because Pullman left the book incomplete. There are so many gaps and holes in the story that it's tiresome to think about them. I really expected the questions to be answered (Why did only Lyra read the aletiometer and then lost power over it? Why did Dust stop leaking because two kids kissed each other?...) So many things not explained. If I find Pullman somewhere, I'll tie him up and force him to tell me the answers for the gaps in the story!!!

[Vicky]

I don't know if you actually want answers or if they were just rhetorical, but here you go.

"Why did only Lyra read the aletiometer and then lost power over it?"

She had an innate grace that came with being the main character an innocent, possibly because despite her rebellious nature she had been kept in a sheltered world for most of her life and so had never begun to lose her innocence (in comparison to, say, one of the Gyptian children, who would have had a harder life and so matured earlier).

She lost the ability when she hit puberty/became sexually mature/split from Pan by going to the world of the dead because then she lost her innocence (through growing up) and therefore Dust couldn't flow through her as easily as it could before. You know how adults and daemons could get cut apart and live, but kids basically couldn't? That's to do with the flow of Dust. Dust comes into people via their daemons. Adults are more separated from their daemons, because they've lost their innocence, and therefore have a weaker connection to Dust. Kids are still innocent and therefore their connection to their daemons is stronger, and thus the flow of Dust into them. Dust is what the alethiometer measures, so in order to be able to read the currents of Dust in it you either have to have a strong innate flow of Dust (see: Lyra through most of the series) or study many books and learn the symbols (see: the scholars mentioned who can read the alethiometer through study).

"Why did Dust stop leaking because two kids kissed each other?"

Dust didn't stop leaking cause Lyra and Will kissed each other. Dust was leaking out through gaps in the edges of the Subtle Knife's windows. The Angels flew around all the worlds and closed all of the windows except the one out from the land of the dead. Dust is still leaking out through that one, but Lyra and Will realised through their love for each other that if every sentient being in all of the worlds truly loved and cared for one another they'd produce enough Dust to counteract the Dust lost from the one window left open. They then vowed to improve the lives of people so that everyone would love each other.

Does that clarify some things?

[Raptori]

If I remember correctly, you're wrong about dust being connected to children more than adults - I remember the opposite being true. Children have much less dust than adults. Examples: in the photo right at the beginning, the child has less dust than the adult, Mary describes this difference in the mulefa, the elder mulefa (Sattamax?) had the strongest and most intricate dust currents Mary saw, Mary assumes Will and Lyra would be solidly bathed in golden light after they return from their picnic holding hands.

So on the original question, perhaps that is why she can read the alethiometer! She could read it because she was innocent and therefore less conscious, which allowed the dust more influence over her thoughts than they would have been able to have if she were more conscious.

As to the second question, I think she means why did the dust start falling in the mulefa world, rather than stop leaking. The leaking is explained, as far as I know, the falling is not.

:)

[Vicky]

RaptorSaur wrote: "If I remember correctly, you're wrong about dust being connected to children more than adults - I remember the opposite being true. Children have much less dust than adults. Examples: in the photo ..."

Oh wait, yeah, I remember that now! Yeah. Maybe the adults' Dust current cloud their vision, so Lyra can read the alethiometer because she isn't clouded.

Mmm, the Dust was flying away from the mulefa's world cause it was leaking into the windows, I think? So the Dust would start falling properly again when the windows got closed by the angels. And there are a lot of angels, so maybe they just moved really really fast.

[Raptori]

Yeah it'd make sense on some level I guess!

Yeah it was, but it started falling before the angels started closing them. The dust started falling on the day that they spent together, but the angels didn't begin closing them until days later when Will and Lyra talked to Xaphania.

So what that tells us is that the dust started falling when they told each other they loved each other - both had clearly already discovered their feelings, the only thing that changed was that they told each other. Why that would cause the dust to start falling isn't explained at all.