The Rose Field

Rob Parsons

18 Dec 2025 — 1 min read

I've been living in Lyra Silvertongue's world for the last few weeks. I finished The Secret Commonwealth last month. I moved on to The Rose Field this month and finished it today, and I now feel almost bereft that I can no longer live in that world, beautifully brought to life by Philip Pullman. The way he writes his characters - they almost write themselves - the way he pulls their lives together, the light he reflects back on to the uglinesses, nastinesses, and light and love of our world, are phenomenal. I can't better Rowan Williams' review; I'm not even going to try. There are some truly wonderful moments, as when Lyra says "Maybe the imagination is a sort of wind that blows through all the worlds", and when she notes that “A system isn’t complete unless there’s a hole in it”, which reminds us that the world is, and we are, inevitably incomplete, and we have a lifetime, and only a lifetime, to explore and connect.

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And now I've arrived

I'm degoogling. That's about the sum of it. More follows.

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To live deliberately

De-googling

De-Microsofting

And now I've arrived