“The Rose Field” by Philip Pullman

Didn’t end up liking this. In fact I’d go so far as to call this an anti-recommendation; in a relatively minor moment, this book revealed some things (not saying what because of spoilers) about the original His Dark Materials trilogy that, in my opinion, cheapen it. Like midichlorians, I’m going to do my very best to pretend that never happened.

But beyond some unfortunate retcons to HDM, this book had a lot of problems all its own. There are dangling plot threads galore; many things from The Secret Commonwealth, and many things introduced here, are never explained or resolved. Some of them are simply things I want to understand how they were significant; others introduce incongruities; other things produce huge questions that the book ignores.

Dangling plot threads are especially annoying because the next problem I’m going to mention is how bloated this book felt. I feel like Philip Pullman might have sufficient standing to have reached “Too Big To Edit” status; I think a good editor would have cut at least 100 pages from this 658 page cat squasher and the book would have been better for it.

There were parts of this book that I loved, just like there were parts of The Secret Commonwealth that I loved. When Pullman took the book to a place of wonder and discovery, like HDM was, it was delightful. When it went to more grounded, realistic places, it was not particularly enjoyable to read. If there was an overall theme to the book, it was a general condemnation of modernity. But it didn’t feel insightful; it felt reactionary.

Overall this was a definite disappointment. If Pullman publishes anything else, I think I’ll wait for some reviews before I decide to give it a shot.