The Rose Field

The story picks up right where The Secret Commonwealth left off. Lyra travels east after Pan with her guide, Abdel Ionides, and has her alethiometer stolen: a gryphon flies off with the gold case. Malcolm goes after Lyra and ends up joining the gryphons. The witch Tilda Vasara and her sisters try to stop the Magisterium's armies marching on a breach in Central Asia. At the hall where rose oil is traded, Lyra learns the Magisterium is wrecking the local trade, and she reunites with Pan. She also learns that Olivier Bonneville is her half-brother. In the end, she renames the Rusakov Field the Rose Field.

1. ReferenceA field from the first book

   The field in the title is a field in the physics sense, like a magnetic field. It first shows up in The Golden Compass under another name: the Rusakov Field.

   source ↗
2. Behind the scenesWritten on a computer

   Pullman wrote by hand for more than 50 years but did this one on a computer because of pain in his hand. He said the pandemic and his age made it a hard book to write.

   source ↗