I last wrote about The Book of Dust in a since-deleted article on particle17 where I argued that it felt like Phillip Pullman was setting up Lyra for a relationship with Malcolm Polstead. I'm happy to say that in the end, this does not happen, but it does feel like it was a crisis saved near the last minute. It took Lyra and Pan separately saying they would always be in love with Will to reach this conclusion though. Crisis averted.

I feel like The Rose Field ends with the cards in-order to indicate that Lyra probably can create openings into other worlds, can probably travel to Will's world, and quite frankly, can probably easily reunite with him. This might be “technically impossible” or a plot hole if it were written, due to The Secret Commonwealth having a segment in there with Will “thinking about Lyra” later. But I think that if we hold this one out to dry for a bit, it could easily be the case that Lyra breaks the rules and cuts between worlds again.

My original objections to HDM's ending were that it felt disingenuous that Lyra would be portrayed in the way she is, ultimately to acquiesce to the will of angels. The ending of HDM implied the angels would be sealing up the holes between worlds, but this simply has not occurred in The Rose Field and they do not seem very motivated to actually complete their mission, owing to the fact that the top priority probably should've been the red building and the openings in the hole openers' worlds. At the end of The Rose Field I feel like she finally has an honest ending, which means that she's officially walking away from the notion that she should follow the direction of the angels and do what they say.

I originally wrote in particle17 that I felt that it was moderately annoying for Michael Sheen to voice Lyra, but I understand that Jo Wyatt probably can't fill this role anymore, and it probably costs a lot of money to hire a full cast again. I think at the end of The Rose Field I'm satisfied with him though. He did name is daughter Lyra, which is very sweet, but he genuinely did a better job than I expected as Lyra. For the rest of the writing, Michael Sheen is very good.

Overall though, I don't know how I feel about the second series, to be honest. I felt like the things we knew about dust are the same. I feel like the series tries to make some profound statements on imagination, as it probably has always intended to, but doesn't quite get the earned payoff it should be. I also feel like there are many plot elements that are brought up that seemingly have no bearing on the story.

For example, the red building is heavily guarded? But nobody seems to be there when the important people show up to blow it up. The rose world? Nobody seems to care about their potential gold mine being blown up. And so on and so forth. The people in the rose world are seemingly completely uncaring that random people from other worlds just waltz in. A great merchant is murdered, and then chaos erupts in every town, so much so that Lyra is put in mortal danger. Then the crisis is averted.

Daemons? They seem to randomly be getting sick and dying, but the answer is decreasing imagination?

Lyra's grandma wants to do what with Lyra? You're telling me we should have sympathy for Bonniville, despite the fact that he seemed intent on murdering Lyra until he found out that she was his sister?

Elements like this are frustrating.

It feels like, around page 600, Phillip Pullman realized the series had to end sooner or later, and decided to finish it. You can make the argument that “the whole book is all about using your imagination, so you should just use your imagination with the ending too”. But to me, this is the type of argument that only works when things are *clearly* aligned in certain directions. The thing I have the highest degree of certainty about is that Lyra would chase Will, but that's because she explicitly says how excited and how passionately in-love she was with him, and the fact that she clearly was *on the topic* near the end of the book. But even this is basically copium and wish fulfillment on my part – I clearly care about Lyra and Will too much.

So if that's the most definitive thing, how are we supposed to extrapolate real conclusions from the rest of the unresolved plot threads?

I'm supposed to suspend disbelief into believing that Lyra and Bonniville are going to be a great brother and sister, especially after the events of the series?

In the end interview with Phillip Pullman, Michael Sheen remarks that it's good that you feel like you're still in a mystery at the end of the book. I disagree: this feels like a bit of an indictment to me. There should be satisfying resolutions to most things – at least those that aren't metaphors. What was the point in introducing the new trading lady, the daemon sicknesses, etc., only for nothing to come of them?

I'm glad I finished the series, but I feel like it's not necessary, at this point, for a reader of HDM to continue beyond Lyra's Oxford. It's too many loose threads with no satisfying conclusion at the end of The Book of Dust.