r/bookclub • u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 • Aug 13 '26
His Dark Materials & La Belle Sauvage [Discussion 3/7] The Rose Field by Philip Pullman | Chapters 11-16
Hello and welcome back to The Rose Field, the third and final installment in Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust series. The master schedule for this read is here.
You can find the marginalia, which will be shared between both His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust series, here. Beware of spoilers!
~~~~~~~~~~Summary~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 11
The gryphon prince Keshvad bears Malcolm and Pan eastward. On the way, Malcolm reveals the prophecy about Lyra, that she would commit a terrible betrayal, and Pan tells Malcolm about Will. They arrive at the gryphons’ palace on Mount Damavand, which seems to have been constructed by human hands. A human servant, Darius, is assigned to them and Malcolm asks him how he came to be here. Darius’s tongue has been cut out, so he can only answer yes or no; Malcolm can only ascertain that Darius is neither a slave nor wholly free.
Pan and Malcolm meet the queen of the gryphons, who asks about their mission. Pan describes imagination as the way that humans navigate between the inner and outer kingdoms. The queen says they must remain in the palace until they successfully fix an item from her treasury: an alethiometer.
Chapter 12
Malcolm uses the lodestone to exchange information with Godwin, who has obtained the list of windows into other worlds which Colonel Schreiber is destroying one by one. His list of possible but unconfirmed locations includes Lop Nor/Karamakan. Malcolm learns that the humans who serve the gryphons are indentured servants, temporarily imprisoned for the crime of trying to steal the gryphons’ gold. He obtains some tools from one of the craftsmen and begins work on the alethiometer, which Pan recognizes as Lyra’s and realizes is missing its needle.
Meanwhile, Delamare prepares for a conference at which Gottfried Brande will speak. Lyra and Ionides are ensconced on their luxury bus traveling through the desert. Ionides explains that he and Leila Pervani were lovers and colleagues at the University of Alexandria, both studying Dust and the Rusakov field. They got in trouble for their fringe research and were expelled from the university. Ionides continued his mathematical research while working odd jobs, while Pervani joined the men from the mountains to keep an eye on one of the groups trying to destroy Dust.
Chapter 13
Mere moments into his speech at the Magisterium conference, Gottfried Brande suffers some kind of seizure and dies on the spot. His German shepherd daemon remains behind, causing a panic among the audience. The daemon is captured and Delamare tries to question her, but she responds with a single sentence in Persian before vanishing. Delamare deduces that she likely was not Brande’s own daemon. An Oakley Street spy in the Magisterium reports these events back to headquarters.
Delamare and his daemon debate publishing Brande’s undelivered speech, which contains ideas that mesh with Delamare’s own. Ultimately, they decide to bide their time to see what happens with Lyra, about whose movements Delamare seems well-informed.
Chapter 14
Lyra and Asta discuss how the alethiometer and the Myriorama cards work, and Lyra shows Asta that notebook with the list of people who can separate from their daemons. One is an Englishman in Baku, where they're headed. Ionides comes in to warn them about a Magisterium agent on the bus, whom Ionides will monitor at the next stop.
The chapter ends with a message from Glenys Godwin to Malcolm with the news that she has been betrayed.
Chapter 15
Malcolm is making progress on the alethiometer and realizes there's no mechanism for the needle, which always appeared to move on its own. He and Pan watch a storm boil up around the mountain and are shocked to see a witch approaching. Gryphon guards try to stop her, but she lands in Malcolm’s room. It's the same which he met at a boy, Tilda Vasara, who has come seeking an alliance with the gryphons.
Malcolm obtains an audience with the queen, where Tilda Vasara describes a threat to all people of the air. The winds are becoming more unpredictable and freshness is leaving the world. A human advisor to the gryphons deduces this is linked with recent explosions, which Malcolm realizes are the Magisterium’s efforts to destroy the world windows. He urges the witches, gryphons, and concerned humans to make an alliance to fight back.
Chapter 16
At the station before Baku, Lyra watches anxiously as Ionides walks up and down the platform, looking for the Magisterium agent. Lyra spots a suspicious man in a cloth cap, who catches sight of her in the bus window before she can duck down. She meets Ionides on the platform in Baku and points out the man in the cloth cap, but Ionides says that isn’t the agent, whom he’d already taken care of by framing him for pickpocketing.
Having escaped from the CCD camp, Alice Lonsdale has hitched a ride back to Oxford. Her first instinct is to go to Jordan College, but she fears the other college servants might turn her in to the Magisterium. She heads for the Trout instead, only to find that it has been requisitioned to billet soldiers, and the field outside is to become a training ground. Malcolm’s parents, Brenda and Reg, give Alice a meal and some extra clothes. Reg will take her to the train station by boat, and from there, she’ll head to London to try and disappear into the crowd.
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
2) Was Pan right to tell Malcolm about Will? How do you think this will impact Lyra and Malcolm’s interactions going forward?
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u/tomesandtea Viceroy of Verity | 🐉🧠 Aug 13 '26
It would have been better coming from Lyra, but then again, Pan is a part of Lyra so maybe it's the same thing? I think it's good that Malcolm knows. I expect it might make things a bit awkward when they first reunite.
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
Well, he did need to tell him the full story about the openings so he had to talk about Will. Probably would've been difficult to discuss without showing what Lyra's true feelings for Will had been. I imagine it will be awkward in their future interactions regardless, seeing that they're spending so much time with each other's daemons now and even touching them.
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
3) Pan describes imagination as a way of moving between the outer kingdom and the inner one, and he says the inner kingdom is the same thing as the Secret Commonwealth. Is he just making things up to appease the gryphons, or is there something to this explanation?
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u/tomesandtea Viceroy of Verity | 🐉🧠 Aug 13 '26
I think there's something to his explanation, even if he might be sort of winging it for the gryphons. I like the idea of the inner/outer kingdoms as related to the imagination because it works with the connections between living things that we've seen at various times throughout the series. I'm a bit confused about the Secret Commonwealth being the inner kingdom because then wouldn't it be different for everyone? And potentially not physically real? Or maybe that's the point, that it relies on belief and imagination and an openness to connections in order for someone to perceive the Secret Commonwealth.
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
Oh that's a good point about the secret commonwealth being inner but still being physically real...maybe you're right and it's only manifesting as real for those with enough imagination. Or maybe it's sort of a bridge between the inner and outer kingdoms and exists partially in both?
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
I've enjoyed his explanations and I think he truly believes them, even if he is using the ideas to his advantage with the gryphons I think he's genuine about it.
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
4) In the original trilogy, we learned that all the windows between the worlds needed to be closed; now, it seems like closing them has negative impacts on Pan and Lyra’s world. What’s going on here?
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u/tomesandtea Viceroy of Verity | 🐉🧠 Aug 13 '26
I'm hoping someone can explain this because to me these feel like opposites. Maybe there's a difference between ones created by the subtle knife or by a human and those that occur naturally or have always existed? Or potentially the ones being closed now are more like openings to the Secret Commonwealth than just to another totally human space? I just don't know...
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
I could get behind the idea of it being a difference between manmade doors and natural ones, that's a good thought!
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
Yes, this has been bothering me! Why was it so bad for them to be open before but now it's bad they are closing up?? It was the whole reason for Lyra and Will separating forever! I hope there is a reason and it's not just a huge plot hole.
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
5) Asta is able to pick up on some of Lyra’s thoughts without Lyra voicing them aloud. Do you think all daemons have this ability, or is it something special about Lyra and Asta’s relationship?
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u/tomesandtea Viceroy of Verity | 🐉🧠 Aug 13 '26
I think it is a special bond between them, because Lyra seems surprised by it. They also seemed able to tolerate touching each other!
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
I think it only comes because of their closeness and is an example of Lyra and Malcom's bond too.
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u/jaymae21 Yearbook Editor-in-Chief 11d ago
This was really interesting to me. Could Lyra & Malcolm potentially switch daemons entirely? Maybe Asta is starting to bond to Lyra, as she spends more time away from Malcolm? And if so, that same thing could happen to Malcolm & Pan.
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
6) Delamare seems intrigued by the idea that Brande’s daemon actually belonged with someone else. What do you think Delamare will do with this information? How does it fit into his broader plans or ideology?
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
The only thing I could think of was that he was going to reveal Brande's speech and ideas and express how they're in line with the magisterium so that he can bring a new group of young minds (aka Brande's devoted followers) to the magisterium's side.
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
7) Malcolm seems to think that he can return the alethiometer to the gryphons without the mechanism inside, since they only care about the gold. Is that a safe assumption? Do you think the gryphons know the alethiometer’s function?
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u/tomesandtea Viceroy of Verity | 🐉🧠 Aug 13 '26
On the one hand, they do seem to value the gold most. On the other hand, they do communicate with pictures and metaphor/connections which is how the alethiometer creates meaning, so they might be angry if it doesn't work. I'd want to stay on their good side if I were Malcolm! Perhaps the needle will be the impetus for getting the gryphons to take them to Lyra and Asta.
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
Aha, I didn't think of the chance that they'd be interested in the metaphors and connections - good point!
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
8) Lyra and Asta discuss the differences between the alethiometer, whose symbols have static meanings, and the Myriorama cards, which show dynamic interactions. What is the significance of these differences between the tools? How might they reveal the truth in different ways?
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u/tomesandtea Viceroy of Verity | 🐉🧠 Aug 13 '26
Lyra seems to be able to use a similar process of focusing her mind to "read" them, but now there is more of an emphasis on story and narrative if I understand the cards correctly. The different tools being used for interpretive properties reminded me of how in the previous books, Mary Malone was able to use the I Ching to interpret the messages with Dust.
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
9) Delamare is well-informed about Lyra’s movements. Do you think one of her allies has betrayed her?
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
I guess it could've been the magisterium' spy on the bus but I also wonder if it is Ionides. Like maybe the cloth cap guy was really a magisterium spy too and Ionides works with him and made it up that it was the glasses guy.
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
10) Is the man in the cloth hat another Magisterium agent, or someone else?
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u/tomesandtea Viceroy of Verity | 🐉🧠 Aug 13 '26
I interpreted this as Lyra feeling hunted and therefore being paranoid. I guess he could have been a spy for Delamare or someone else!
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
I'm still suspicious of him since he and Lyra did have that weird moment of eye contact and he did seem to be acting shady!
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
11) Are the witches part of the Secret Commonwealth? How about the gryphons? In Lyra’s world, people have known about witches for some time, while gryphons appear to be relatively unknown. Why do you think that is?
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u/Clean_Environment670 📚Bookclub Boffin📚 Aug 14 '26
Good question! I feel like the distinctions between the secret commonwealth, other worlds, and things like the witches are blurry to me! I welcome any interpretations!
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
12) Any favorite quotes or scenes from this section? What else would you like to discuss?
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u/Less_Tumbleweed_3217 Born To Read, Forced To Work | 🎃👑🧠 Aug 13 '26
1) Malcolm and Pan discuss whether Lyra’s abandonment of Pan outside the world of the dead counts as betrayal, if she did it to keep a promise. What do you think?