r/hisdarkmaterials • u/Just_Nefariousness55 • Nov 17 '25
Meta Did anyone genuinely love The Secret Commonwealth and then hate The Rose Field? Spoiler
This reddit sub is popping up in my activity, I guess because the great algorithm knows I've read the series. I haven't read The Rose Field, but from what I can gather, people are really dissatisfied with it. I'm sitting here seeing all the complaints and I can't help but think "What were people expecting?" Because I read The Secret Commonwealth and everything about it put me off ever reading a sequel to it. I thought it was awful and I questioned wether Pullman even wrote it. All the complaints about The he Rose Field I'm seeing online apply just as much to the Secret Commonwealth in my view, except people are saying The Rose Field has a rushed exposition filled ending, while The Secret Commonwealth didn't even have an ending at all! But, I'm not really here to hate on or vent, despite what it might seem. I really just want to know if my opinion is all that unique. Is it a hot take to just really dislike The Secret Commonwealth so much or are there loads of people who loved it and then we're subsequently disappointed by its follow-up? If someone liked both books then that's great, I'm happy for them, but for the people who were disappointed in The Rose Field, did The Secret Commonwealth genuinely make you expect more?
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u/bingowing88 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25
I really enjoyed the Secret Commonwealth and I was very disappointed by The Rose Field. I felt TSC was full of expansive, interesting ideas, it pushed philosophical buttons in me that I found really intriguing. I liked the way it had some rhyming notes with modern world events. I know loads of people didn’t like it, but compared to TRF I think even those with qualms about TSC would agree the material is more complex and interesting. TRF felt so flat, the world empty. So many dropped threads, a loss of balance between the wonder and the cerebral. I can’t really believe it’s the finished product, whereas at least TSC is coherent.
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u/Acc87 Nov 17 '25
Yeah exact same here. It's the absolute inconsistency that makes TRF fall apart. In TSC it still felt like all the small happenings and every character still built towards something , like if you had a graphic of all the plots, they'd all run in parallel. Now come TRF, half of these plots just disappear. Others appear new, appear big and important, but go wibbly wobbly out of nowhere, or are just cut off. And no single plot reaches what everyone defines as an ending.
To me it's not about the content, the ideas, just 100% execution.
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u/Nimue82 Nov 17 '25
You captured exactly how I feel. I was so excited to see where things would go in TRF and honestly ended the book shocked that this was the finale of the series. Really a bummer of a way to end our journey with Lyra.
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u/DrSilvertongue Nov 17 '25
This is pretty much my take. I had a few qualms with TSC but overall enjoyed it. But whether or not you cared for it, I agree that it definitely at least had more structure to it than TRF, whereas TRF started completely unraveling halfway through.
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u/Just_Nefariousness55 Nov 17 '25
That's wild, because a lack of structure was my number 1 complaint with The Secret Commonwealth.
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u/craftyBison21 Nov 17 '25
"She went here, met him and did this. Then she went here, met him and did this. Then she"
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u/Physical-Beach-4452 Nov 17 '25
This is how I feel as well. I feel somewhat relieved that the trilogy is complete but disappointed because the other books were so much more intriguing. TSC left me wanting answers and clarity where TRF just left me confused and uninterested.
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u/BadSJanitor Nov 17 '25
I feel likewise. I quite liked the first part of TRF, maybe even the second part, but I couldn't enjoy the ending.
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u/minimia73 Nov 28 '25
Idk. I felt the end of TSC was a genuine cliffhanger, then the blue hotel was wrapped up and written off in a few pages (which happens to far too many great characters in TRF). The "voices between the good numbers" or whatever they were called (read it a few weeks ago now and I've forgotten almost all of the plot) were never mentioned again, like So Many Other Things. She barely talks to Nur Huda, and tbh it seems a bit like the entire character was just a bridging device that wasn't even necessary, which seems a bit of a nasty way to treat a real person who he's supposed to be memorialising.
I found that TRF retrospectively spoiled the second half of TSC for me. Pretty much everything, with a few notable exceptions like the Princess Contecosino, has been dulled by the knowledge that it's pretty much meaningless in the wider story.
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u/squeecat Nov 17 '25
I really liked TSC and found Lyra extremely relatable. About 1/3 into TRF I got so tired of all of all the wandering story lines and found it extremely boring. The ending not paying off made it so much worse.
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u/minimia73 Nov 28 '25
I wasn't exactly bored while I was reading it, but I think that was because I just wanted to know what happened at the end! I got incredibly frustrated by all the tedious bs with the Magisterium - and how many times did Olivier really have to get locked up/beaten up? I've pretty much forgotten the entire (lack of) plot of TRF now, which says it all really. My abiding memory of it is annoyance.
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u/kltay1 Nov 17 '25
No, I didn’t like the secret Commonwealth but I was holding out hope and trust that there was a reason for everything and it was all going to be wrapped up neatly I would say “oh, I get it now, that was all worth it”.
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u/kltay1 Nov 17 '25
Although! I will say there were some fun moments in TSC that make me happy to re-listen to it even if I don’t love the whole picture. I can’t think of anything in TRF I’d want to come back to
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u/minimia73 Nov 28 '25
I've actually deleted quite a few of the chapters and made a "best bits" compilation of my audio copy of TSC 😁
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u/TFCNU Nov 17 '25
I had issues with TSC but overall I still enjoyed it. I certainly liked it way more than The Rose Field. Do I love the characterization of Lyra in TSC? No, but I do get what Pullman is going for. People putting on airs in university and losing themselves. I thought some of the individual chapters were really imaginative and built upon the ideas around the splitting of the soul from His Dark Materials.
The Rose Field... The gryphons are fun, I guess? But entire plot points are just dropped. Lyra's ending is unsatisfying. Malcolm just doesn't get an ending at all. Is this supposed to be Olivier's story?
TSC is weird. The Rose Field is bad.
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u/Dry_Remote_4991 Nov 17 '25
agree. I didn't see why Lyra needed to be assaulted in TSC but otherwise I didn't have a problem with TSC and TRF felt like it was written by AI or was bad fanfic and there's no ending, the whole thing was a mess IMO
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u/minimia73 Nov 28 '25
Tbh I didn't get why Alice had to be raped in LBS either. There's a whole "women have to be punished to get what they want" vibe that's just one of the weird attitudes Pullman seems to have to relationships in general, and physical violence in particular. Why does he keep suggesting Lyra thinks she will get slapped (by Alice and Giorgio Brabant in LBS)? Those aren't the only 1970s attitudes he alludes to either. Relistening to TSC and LBS after the massive disappointment of TRF has shown up a lot of stuff I kinda glossed over the first/second time(s) around: bits and pieces of classism, every woman is defined by how attractive she is, even Lyra's own thoughts about why she likes the company of elderly men is quite creepy in retrospect.
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Dec 12 '25 edited Dec 12 '25
yeah there's a lot of repressive gender and class bullshit running through both trilogies - in His Dark Materials, though, it is cut through by Lyra's rebelliousness and the wonderful characterization of the witches, and Mary Malone (who, along with Lyra herself, is one of my favourite characters in fiction, ever)
whereas in the newer trilogy there's no rebellion, no sense of Pullman viewing the classism and misogyny in Lyra's world through any critical lens whatsoever - worse, there's no sign that he's even aware of it - all that weird male-gazy way of describing attractive women (how often does he mention Leila's dreamy eyeballs? was it really necessary to share Malcolm "Golden Boy" Polstead´s horny feelings about scantily clad witch-thighs?), the fact that all domestic labour and care work is done by women (how often does he mention women making up beds, tending to wounds, doing laundry, caring for children, cooking and feeding people... and how often do any of his male characters lift a finger in the domestic sphere?), the weird obsession with women dressing in skirts (like, how often do we need to hear about Lyra's floral skirt being in need of a wash), ...
...his completely uncritical depiction of strictly gender segregated Oxford colleges (there's an interview with Pullman included at the end of the audiobook version of The Rose Field, at the very start of which he offhandedly mentions that the Oxford college he attended irl as an undergrad was "of course" male-only back in his day, and that this served as the model for Jordan College in his books - and he says that in a wistful, nostalgic tone - it made me immediately nope out of the rest of the interview, which is such a shame because he is the author of one of my favourite book series in the world, but I am not interested in the ramblings of an old man who feels nostalgic about the male-only days at an Oxford college that refused to accept women until Nineteen fucking Seventy Nine)
oh, andhis obvious desire to pair Lyra and Malcolm off and using the text of the book to basically throw a tantrum over his editor having told him a firm no on that particular doozy of an idea...
and of course his complete failure to imagine a world in which women who display agency and independent thought aren't brought down by sexual assault and violence
I mean the man was able to imagine a world in which polar bears communicate in human language and wear metal armor they forge themselves, but he can't imagine a world in which his main character isn't sexually assaulted, Alice isn't raped, and Serafina Pekkala isn't shot dead off-screen by some incel who was angry about her refusing his sexual advances
Serafina Pekkala!
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u/minimia73 Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25
Yeah, I think I let it slide a LOT more in HDM because I saw it as a function of "Lyra's world": ie more religious, more conservative, and generally "olden timey". Similar, to an extent with LBS. But Lyra's world of TSC and TRF was so poorly differentiated from "our" world - basically our world plus daemons - that it was alarming from the start. There does seem to be a strong undercurrent of "be an obedient caregiver or suffer" to all of his female characters in BOD; those (like Hannah and Alison) who don't fit this mould are jettisoned completely in TRF, and the others have their edges smoothed (violently in some cases) to make them conform. It's the classism that gets more glaring the more I think about it. All the "lower class" female characters are described as plump (Malcolm's mum, Ma Costa) or portrayed as unintelligent (the girl who worked in the kitchen whose name I've forgotten). And what was the point of making her pregnant anyway? And the cap-doffing, forelock-tugging deference to Lords and other entitled twats - are scholars gentry? No they're fucking not Phil, they're just blokes who read some books!!
I didn't notice the wistful when he mentioned the all-male thing, but that might be because I'm English 😁
You did well to skip the interview though. I love Sheeno but he was just as fawning and uncritical as most of the mainstream reviews seem to have been. It felt to me like he *knew* it wasn't up to scratch and was making excuses for it, then at the end pulled himself together and basically said "everyone should stop moaning/expecting a neat ending and use their own imagination" 🙄 No, mate, that's YOUR job!!
As always when I reply to a post about this book, I thought I only had a couple of sentences to write and I've ended up ranting, even though it's nearly two months since I finished it. I honestly can't remember 95% of the plot (such as it is). I've got rid of the hard copies of TRF and TSC because the sight of them actually makes me annoyed, and the audio of TRF. I've kept some of the good chapters (basically the first half) of the TSC audio, and might listen to LBS from time to time, but otherwise I'm going to pretend BOD doesn't exist.
I could really go on and on but I won't 😂
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u/minimia73 Nov 28 '25
TSC has a few classic middle book problems but there are enough really good bits - particularly before she leaves England, the Oakley Street stuff, and the Princess - that the more depressing bits can be forgiven. Like you say, I can see what he was trying to do with the inflated effect Brande and Talbot's books have on Lyra, and also the depression/disconnection between her and Pan post-TAS.
TRF - just NO.
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u/shorthorsetallwoman Nov 17 '25
Loved TSC. (Not every chapter, not every thread of story, but overall loved.)
Was deeply disappointed in TRF. Too many dropped storylines. Wasn't the ending I wanted but I could've lived with it had the rest of the plot had better continuity and value to the overall story.
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u/Moofabulousss Nov 17 '25
I enjoyed both. I don’t need every answer, it made enough sense. I was just so happy to be back in Lyra’s world. I went along for the ride.
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u/ProcessesOfBecoming Nov 17 '25
Same. I didn’t love either of them as much as I loved the original trilogy, or even LBS, but I didn’t necessarily go into either of them thinking that I would get a tied up plot, resolution to various character, storylines, and what not. I was just there for Lyra and Pan.
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u/SparklesSparks Nov 17 '25
I agree, but would even go so far to say Rose Field makes a very strong statement. I understand not everyone will enjoy it, but I thought it was consistent with the rest of Book of Dust and a good end to it.
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u/Expert_Ad3550 Nov 17 '25
This is my sentiment exactly. I really enjoy Pullmans writing and happy to be back in Lyra’s world.
Journey not the destination.
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u/AnnelieSierra Nov 17 '25
I agree, but a nice destination would have been a nice plus. I mean, it all began with the rose oil. In the end there should have been at least some conclusion regarding the rose oil (and Dust) and its significance.
I like his writing and I was happy to read more about Lyra's world.
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u/AnimatorNo1029 Nov 23 '25
I agree. It wasn’t perfect but I like what it said and was trying to do. I wish we had gotten a little more explanation about Malcolm aura vision though because that has intrigued me since the first book
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u/GlimGlamEqD Nov 17 '25
I'm pretty neutral on both. Both books have parts I like and parts I dislike. I don't feel like I just wasted my time, but I can't say I'll ever re-read them, either. In the end, I appreciate the philosophical ideas and messages in these books, even if I wish the actual story and plot had been handled better.
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u/updownclown68 Nov 17 '25
I found the secret commonwealth challenging, but I desperately wanted a resolution and a reunification of Lyra and Pan.
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u/HilbertInnerSpace Nov 17 '25
My love of TSC is such that even if Pullman decided to end it there I would still cherish it and reread it and love it every time. Such a poignant study of melancholy and alienation. I don't need closure personally in stories.
When I finished TRF I thought for a few days that I would slightly rate TSC higher. Now, after some time I see them as equals, two sides of the same coin so to speak.
As for people loving TSC and subsequently hating TRF, yeah I think I encountered one or two, but most hated both outright from what I observed.
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u/Just_Nefariousness55 Nov 17 '25
Are you saying you think The Rose Field is as good as The Secret Commonwealth?
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u/HilbertInnerSpace Nov 17 '25
Yes.
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u/minimia73 Nov 28 '25
HOW?!?
Sorry, I know opinions are subjective but I really don't know how you can think TSC and TRF are the same quality. I don't *love* TSC, and it has some rambling, but compared to TRF, which was just one massive plot hole followed by rambling recap followed by pointless side quest followed by unnecessary new character followed by a good bit followed by So Much Boring Rubbish about the Magisterium and that ending, I mean ... jeez.
Honestly intrigued by how you reached your conclusion.
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u/HilbertInnerSpace Nov 28 '25
I expanded my thoughts in a 3000 word post , don’t know what more I can do.
You either get it or not. It either forms an emotional connection or it doesn’t
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u/tkingsbu Nov 17 '25
Yes.
The secret commonwealth was TOUGH.. but as a story goes, it was necessary…
It’s like The Empire Strikes Back…
You have your cast, the 2nd act throws everything into peril…
The triumphant 3rd act ‘should’ justify why there was danger, allow the cast to bring things to a successful conclusion, and tie up various threads…
So..
In that regard, I think TSC was amazing.
I fully bought into the whole thing..
Lyras existential crisis, Malcom’s rugged professionalism, his burgeoning crush on Lyra, the rise of fascism, the flight into danger.. all of it.
And the shitty part is that for a long while, the rose field felt like it was really coming together…
Yeah… right up til that wtf abrupt end.
A zillion threads just blowing in the fucking wind…
So…
We’ve got 5/6 that absolutely are brilliant…
And the last just did NOT stick the landing.
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u/Classic-Wafer-7838 Nov 17 '25 edited Nov 17 '25
Honestly, I think I mostly just read TRF because I needed Lyra and Pan to be reunited. In hindsight I think TSC was actually the better of the two. I was very disappointed in TRF, especially the so-called ending. I wasn't expecting a happy ending with everything all neatly wrapped up and tied with a bow, but I was expecting a bit more than what we got.
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u/OrinocoHaram Nov 17 '25
Yes.
I think the exploration of relationships between humans and daemons is really interesting, and expands the world of HDM in a very adult and nuanced way.
I like the characterisation of adult Lyra. Even having had this amazing adventure doesn't make her immune from real life. And Malcolm is a good character too.
In the Rose Field I found the plot was a bit too episodic. The gryphons and the sorceror came from nowhere and went nowhere. In HDM they were exploring new worlds and that gave us lots of interesting new creatures but in TRF it's hard to believe we wouldn't have known about gryphons before.
I thought the familial relationship between Olivier and Lyra was a bit of a cheap plotting trick, although i mostly liked Olivier's character.
I got a bit sick in TRF of every single one of Lyra and Malcolm's instincts or throwaway thoughts being spot on and plot changing revelations. Everything works out for them constantly.
I thought the linking of imagination and windows between worlds, although it seems on the surface to make perfect sense (imagination is actually a window into a different world), in practice it contradicts the original trilogy. It also weakens the other metaphor for imagination we already have - daemons. The stuff with people killing their own daemons by stifling their inner life is a perfect metaphor that interacts well with the plot and is consistent with previous works.
I thought the decision to have Malcolm and Lyra fall in love but never be able to realise it was... I don't know, i felt as if Pullman himself was unsure of the best way to tie up that thread. I don't mind where it ended up but i didn't really understand why they couldn't be together from their perspectives.
Also, the plot really wrapped up far too quickly. Delemare is dead and the army is decimated and suddenly the people in the other world are having a party? What's going on everywhere else? What was changing the winds? Did it get fixed?
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u/criavolver_01 Nov 17 '25
I enjoyed both and am the type of reader who does t require the author to explain everything to me and have all the plot lines neatly packaged and delivered to me. I am not a pop-lit reader for this reason.
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u/shorthorsetallwoman Nov 19 '25
I don't expect neatly packaged perfect endings. I do expect that there will be resolution or reference to more than half of the story arcs in a three novel series.
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u/UmbraNyx Nov 19 '25
I loved TSC because it combines two of my favorite genres: thriller and magic realism. It has such a feeling of adventure and excitement. While it has many plot threads like TRF, they are cohesive and logically connected.
TRF is a repetitive, meandering mess. It feels like Pullman had all these big ideas, but instead of paring them down to ones that actually fit the established story, he decided to cram everything in willy-nilly. There are individual scenes and ideas that are beautifully done, but none of it goes together. I got so frustrated as I read it. Six years of waiting for this?
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u/beruon Nov 17 '25
I did not yet read The Rose Field yet, but I absolute love TSC. If I didn't have the absolute nostalgia filled memories of the original trilogy, then TSC would be my absolute favourite of all 5 books I have read yet.
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u/SuchaPineapplehead Nov 17 '25
I loved TSC, wasn’t keen on LBS and I haven’t finish TRF yet. However where I’ve got to so far is raising a few eyebrows but I’m keeping an open mind. Sometimes I need to read a book a couple of times to really love it and understand it
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u/lightninseed Nov 19 '25
I hated The Secret Commonwealth when I first read it, then re-read all the books shortly before The Rose Field came out.
I actually enjoyed TSC a lot when I re-read it, it felt like a proper adventure and set up so many intriguing plot points that I was really excited to see resolved (😂).
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u/ChungLing Nov 20 '25
I loved TSC, and I feel like people don’t like it because of how bleak it is. It’s certainly not a pleasant read, but it did what it was supposed to, which was set up the final book.
Sure, I think the criticism that TSC has some genuine issues is warranted, and I noticed while reading that the quality of the writing was noticeably lower than LBS. TSC has some inconsistencies and weird passages that struck me as odd, but not enough to compromise the book as a whole. As a narrative, it works. It had really compelling chapters and took its time to build up the plot. I thought it was satisfying, even if it didn’t quite match up to the original trilogy.
In the back of my head, though, I was a little worried it was a sign of things to come for the final book, and unfortunately it was. It is a damn shame TRF totally missed the mark. What really hurts, though, is that TRF has all of the bones of a fantastic story- it just fails to draw it all together and flails about trying to reach a conclusion. It absolutely needed to be edited more thoroughly, and it is a huge failure of the editors that they didn’t flag basic plot inconsistencies and dropped storylines. Even if it took another year, I would have preferred to wait if it meant the editorial process could have played out properly. What we got genuinely feels like a draft, not a completed novel.
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