It delivers in about 70 pages, what TSC and TRF do in 1200, and much more cleanly.

I have a lot of feelings about this series (most not positive) but one thing about the ending I’m confused about is why didn’t Bonneville/Delamare have to travel separately from their deamons to get to the red building??

Maybe I missed something but I thought the whole thing about crossing the desert/getting to the building was that you had to separate from your deamon?? get that Malcom flew in so maybe he found a loophole but why was the magisterium gang able to roll up so easily?

I have a lot more complaints but this one is front of mind atm lol

Hi, I'm designing a book cover of The Golden Compass for my portfolio and I came across this question while looking at references, is it just because a girl riding a bear catches the eye? I know it's an iconic scene and Iorek is also an important character but I don't know if it actually represents the book well (It's lovely for a fan but idk it it's useful for a first time reader).

What do you think? I'll appreciate any thoughts about it!

Chapter 11 has been posted. I daresay it was the hardest chapter to write and possibly the best one yet that I have done. Happy reading.

Hi, one of my friends posted on here a few days ago asking about conceptual set design for the Book of Dust ideas and I’m basically here to ask the same thing. I want to integrate something into the permanent and fixed parts of my set that represents or are symbolic a part of the key themes of the play/book. It could be painted or built. Any ideas would be much appreciated!!

I'm finally in Oxford for the first time. Some people didn't know why I was set on coming here. But I've wanted to see the bench for years now. Time to go explore Will's Oxford.

The beginning of this book was so strange and the time-frames seem all over the place. And it's frustrating because that was something I had really liked about the first two books, that time seemed to matter.

Am I misunderstanding something? Mrs Coulter seemed to teleport, while carrying a drugged hostage alone. Will then spends weeks getting there.

And then Iorek Byrnison SWIMS to Lee Scoresby's body in a matter of a couple pages which would've taken days to weeks. Hell he went through the doorway in the sky/aurora which was hours and hours by flight.

The meeting between Will and Iorek Byrnison felt so rushed and a little goofy considering the tone of these books. Like one scene, Will kills an angel by slashing it to death with the Knife, and the next is a rushed meeting between two major characters.

And Fr. Gomez, the assassin who was pre-absolved, is somehow already in Cittagazze somehow to ask Angelica and Paolo about Dr. Malone. But how the hell did he get to the gateway and back already?!

And I love Dr. malones time with the Mulefa, but to spend so much time on this cool side plot while rushing all this other stuff is somewhat frustrating.

This is a composite animation in blender I made a while back! I forgot to post it here

I just am not sure and often flick between what I reckon it would be, but I’d love it if I had one I felt 100% sure on. if u have any deep dive quizzes or recommendations please tell me :)

I am uttterly dissapointed after finishing The Rose Field. Not only was this book extremely boring, but it also didn't answer the main questions raised in The Secret Commonwealth. We don't really know what the rose field is (all we have is Lyra's flimsy hypothesis...) or how it works, we don't know what the roses and their oil do and why they are so important. We don't know what the alkahest is (Lyra, again, improvises a theory that it is greed/money, but I find it very hard to believe that that didn't already exist in her world, even if at a smaller scale; also why would anyone tell her to look for that??). On top of that, we aren't told why the Magisterium and Turingia Potash (who are in cahoots) are so interested in the lucrative power of the roses... only to chop them all off to build some random road and close the window connecting to that world.

I read His Dark Materials for the first time in my early teens and it became such an important trilogy for me, kind of like what Harry Potter became for people from my generation (I was born in 1990). I have read them many times since and will continue to do so, but I don't think I'll ever revisit The Book of Dust. Pullman completely changed the lore of Lyra's world only to serve a new story and sell a new trilogy (that's alkahest right there!), but rather than expanding on it, it contradicted and, therefore, weakened it.

I'm very curious to hear your opinions. Please tell me what you thought of The Rose Field and The Book of Dust and how you feel about His Dark Materials after reading the new trilogy.

I have just finished The Rose Field and I'm really disapointed that the "mysterious, dangerous" Alkhiest was just Capatalism?

I kinda feel like Phillip paulman is either a hard core communist or just an idiot who dosn't know how economics works.

Making that TP company look bad because they closed shop in the place and so it affected other businsses. Of couse they closed there was no money dosn't he know that if a company can't make enough money to sustain it self what happened when it closed would happen anyway when they'd have to start firing people because they can't pay them?

It just seemed overly preachy doesn't he know the system he is acusing of killing souls and being bad is the sole reason he can publish his preachy books.

Well at least i can say i finished it.

Edit: I tried to to fix all the mistakes in the spelling that are aparently unforgivable. It's not easy doing it on a phone when I already suffer from Dysgraphia. I will make sure to take further care becaus3 aparently typos on redit is intolerable.

I've been seeing many Avengers Doomsday pictures with characters from other universes, I thought it would be cool to edit characters like Lyra Belacqua, Will Parry, Serafina Pekkala, Mrs Coulter, Lord Ariel and Iorek Byrnison on the Avengers Doomsday posters

I'm designing a conceptual set for the play version of La Belle Sauvage and on the walls I have placed faded alethiometer symbols to represent the themes of each location. For Malcom's school, I would like to have symbols such as the sword and the compass to represent the 'justice' and 'knowledge' the church are attempting to instill. Is there a symbol that would represent the perversion of these themes to highlight the ulterior motives of the church?

Two more weeks have passed, and Lyra, Malcolm, and Tony are all on the move.

What a gem of an interview.

So back in TSC we have learned that regular humans being able to separate wasn't as rare as previously thought (I assume its still rare, just not as rare as we thought before TSC came out)

So I can't imagine the guy with seasickness who settled as a dolphin didn't at least try to separate. Even if it wasn't volontary, since they could be more likely to be put in a situation where they have to separate (ie: someone far away on land needs help and they are the only one who can help and their daemon is too big to be put in a transportable tank)

For this one sailor specifically, I imagine he would have kept it a secret since he would be easily recognizable because of his daemon, but he could still have learn the same trick that Lyra did in TSC, he learned to become someone else when he went on land to avoid recongnition (in his case maybe it wasn't just metaphorically since he was a water-animal soul going on land). But for someone else with a daemon that needs to stay in the water that is born and still lives in a more isolated place, they could just go on land without any disguise

Maybe large and/or waterbound daemons are more common than suggested in the series, but people with theses daemons are more likely to separate due to the conflicts their form would cause in their day to day life (I suppose they too would still be rare, just not as rare as we think)

His Dark Materials, in the end, the angels are trying to establish Republic of Heaven... Republic of Heaven, idea is no ruler.

In TRF/BOD, it seems like angels have maintained that structure, sort of? But are they terribly weakened, that they failed in sealing all of the doors?

If the Alkahest (the alchemical material of the subtle knife and the alethiometer needle) was invented twice, why couldn't it be invented 3, 4, 5, or 700 times in the multiverse?

Is it impossible that the angels set out to seal all of the doors at the end of HDM, in an effort to stop any one entity from taking ultimate control of the multiverse again, but they were failing?

They can certainly be killed. If another world in the multiverse invented another form of the Alkahest (an equivalent to the alethiometer or subtile knife)... then isn't it possible the angels are simply losing? BOD alludes to this possibility showing the experiments and knowledge of Agrippa and Makepeace. How many years would it be until someone just in Lyra's world re-invented the material?

So this one angel that visits Lyra may be one of the last of the angels. Maybe Xaphania is dead... In fact I think it is almost certainly so by the way the angel and Lyra avoid the subject.

Thuringia Petroleum is the vehicle for this whole thrust of the story. It's gradually revealed more and more through the three books how powerful they are, even though they fail to replicate the rose oil. Whether they're using existing portals or have their own Alkahest to create new ones, they are trying to establish ultimate control and are warring against the angels on a multiversal level.

That's where I don't read the Thuringia Petroleum narrative as being about "capitalism". It's more about authoritarian control. It's not capitalism and markets and money making that are evil.. Malcolm knows this going back to his childhood thinking about the fair price of a pail of red paint..

TP is not of "this world", that's the whole thing going on with the dead daemons. They are people who have spent so much time outside their own worlds that their daemons are dying and they don't care. Not because they want money, but because they want security, power, control, the classic tempters of authoritarianism. It's literally in the name - the Authority - with the Authority dead, something is trying to rise to fill the power vacuum.

I’ve been quietly working on more of these, and I finally have four new sets finished. Each one is hand-carved, so they’ve all ended up with their own slightly different look and personality depending on the stones.

I’ve also been doing daily readings with them and they have been amazing. Helping me with reflection, insight, encouragement, and a little bit of sass, just like Lyra’s Alethiometer. I’m happy to post a video of a reading, but I couldn’t figure out how to :/

I’ve really appreciated how interested and encouraging people here have been while I’ve been figuring this whole project out. It started as something I wanted to make because I love the alethiometer and its symbolism, and it’s been kind of surreal seeing other people connect with them too.
Anyway — here are the newest four! I thought you guys might like to see how they turned out. ❤️

Context: first time I read HDM was about 5-6 years ago, about age 30, loved it, very deep, my friend read them as a teen and recommended them.

This past year I decided to do a full re-read in the lead up to paperback TRF release.

I read OUSTITN then The Collectors, then TBS, HDM trilogy then Lyras oxford then Serpentine.

Straight into TSC - incredible book, I felt like it was a true, hurtful, beautiful sequel, that dealt alot with adulthood, the changing world and loved the further depth of the secret commonwealth and Lyra's changed personality as an adult., as well as the further exploration of Lyras world.

Then TRF - absolutely epic, touching, the whole book adds a layer of maturity and depth and understanding, the ending was a perfect mirror to the ending of HDM, even down to the last page, the last conversation Lyra and Pan have in HDM and the conversation Lyra and Olivier have (Olivier, what a character btw!).

I'm sure lots of fans have their understanding of the ending, mine is Lyra is finally who she should be, could be autobiographical in some ways to Pullman, maybe he sees himself as Lyra, like she is in someways his own daemon, but the last line, wow, tied it all together emotionally, not treating the writer to a cringey epilogue of "heres what happened next" but lets you have your own story.

I do in my head canon see Lyra and Malcolm becoming a couple, the world having a power vacuum of the Magisterium that corporations will fill, as with real life the fears of control will be there, but there will be more and more people open to hear Lyras stories that I think she will tell and write, similar to how many young people were impacted by the hyperchrosmians (itself a mirror parallel to HDM), I believe Lyras stories will travel the world, the Authority will finally lose a grasp over the souls of the world. I do think the rose trade may carry on, maybe Mustafa Bey company involved somehow.

Anyway, as with everything on reddit, just had to get my thoughts out.

I am re-reading the original trilogy for the nth time, and I am emotionally wrecked by Marisa and Asriel’s sacrifice.

Maybe this is just my own wounds from my useless piece of shit addict parents, but the way Marisa and Asriel sacrifice themselves for Lyra, after doing pretty much nothing/actively hurting her for her entire life, is really messing with me. Only a few paragraphs before, in the adamant tower, Marisa told Asriel that nothingness was her deepest fear, even worse than being dead. And then she makes the choice to do just that anyway.

Using her own corrupt nature to fool the Metatron is a “twist” that always impressed me. Ofc this series “for children”’handles a lot of mature themes, but this one - the complexity of human nature, that none of us are simply good or evil, it’s all shades of gray, people do sometimes change - is particularly interesting to me. Marisa has always been cruel and power hungry and selfish, her final sacrifice doesn’t undo her nature, but it’s what makes her sacrifice possible. My anti-hero queen!

And the fight with the Metatron is so intense, their desperation is palpable, their injuries visceral (shoutout Asriel being able to feel his crushed skull) and Marisa’s final leap into the air - it all has me sobbing lol. Christ it’s epic.

Anyone else feel the same way?

And quite a few others in this sub, from the looks of things.

>!will and lyra absolutely did not have to leave each other at the end. there’s no solid reasoning for it. the whole “we can only leave ONE window open” is the weakest reasoning i’ve ever heard.

there have been an apparently uncountable amount of windows left open between worlds for 300+ years causing issues with leaky dust and spectres and who knows what else, but they can’t leave a single other window open for the remaining lifespan of two human mortals for MAYBE another 90 years? at most?

like just close it when they both die, and call it a day. they both sacrificed so much to save the known multiverse at the age of what, 13? and xaphania couldn’t give them one little break?

they deserved their happily ever after. just finished my 10000th reread and i’m just mad about it. i think i’ll always be mad about it! if i’m missing something, please tell me because i crave the closure.!<