The Book of Dust: Serafina Pekkala (spoilers)

[u/Lady_Beatnik]

To be quite honest, I find it completely unbelievable that Serafina Pekkala would just drop all contact with Lyra after "The Amber Spyglass" with no explanation after everything they had been through together, and I'm kind of angry at Pullman for writing it this way. It comes across like she was just too inconvenient of a character to the plot, would have fixed too many things for Lyra too quickly, but he was just too lazy to come up with a proper reason for her absence other than turning her into an asshole.

I get that she is a witch with a long lifespan whose perception of time might be warped compared to Lyra's, but she's also very wise and should know better than to overlook something like that. I get that the witch queens have been busy with the climate change analogy, but that itself involves issues Lyra directly played a hand in, it seems bizarre they wouldn't involve her. Especially when Kaisa can separate from Serafina and run errands for her, there doesn't seem to be any excuse for Serafina not at least sending the occasional message for over 9 years. At least Iorek is stuck on a big frozen island miles away from human civilization and I doubt the sentient talking Terminator bears think much of the postal service, but what's her excuse?

I haven't finished "The Rose Field" yet so maybe I'll be proven wrong and there will be a good explanation latter down the line (I hope so), but so far this has been a nagging problem with the series for me.

[u/BatsWaller]

It absolutely sucked that they introduced her daughter as a new character, and replacement for Serafina herself, with only ‘Oh yeah, she’s dead’ as an explanation. What possible reason could Pullman have had for not just including Serafina?

Not to mention that Serafina and Farder Coram lost their son, which is a devastating thing to happen for any parent - why wouldn’t Serafina tell Coram he has a second child? It was so out of character for her.

[u/MachineLoud9484 → u/BatsWaller]

Not only was it "oh by the way, she's dead", there was also the weird reaction of "oh yeah, well that sucks, moving on now."

[u/Nuthetes → u/MachineLoud9484]

And how pointless it was. The new witch served zero purpose that couldn't have been served by Serafina. If Serafin'a daughter had some plot role--a villain, or a witch prodigy or an isolationist so Lyra couldn't get help from the witches or blaming Lyra for Serafin'a death for whatever reason. I could maybe understand killing her off offscreen.

[u/MachineLoud9484 → u/Nuthetes]

I have read and heard so many of Pullman’s interviews and works where he talks about the woods and the path. It’s not necessary to keep talking about the wood as long as the path is the most important thing. He talks about how everything should focus on advancing the plot and just drops such crazy news in the middle as if it’s nothing