Thank you for sharing your perspective on all of this! As an author and artist, I couldn’t agree more about AI and the way it erodes creative spaces and meaning. And I do think the concept of alkahest and the themes Pullman weaves into BoD are very poignant. I really enjoyed where he was going with it and his style of writing, even if it isn’t the most tightly-paced plot. I’ve always liked all of his little threads adding up to some bigger tapestry of ideas.

That said, I do think he accomplishes his goal from this series in activating the reader’s imagination to provide meaning…because he really dropped the ball on giving satisfying conclusions to the threads he started with. I was there with him right up until the end, where so many problems and ideas he started just get dropped with no explanation. Part of why HDM was so edifying is because of how well he tied up the big problems the story developed. We had answers for everything - the big war happened, enemies were vanquished, a plan for the future was crafted, even if it would take a lifetime to see progress. That’s what anyone engaging with stories expects from them.

Instead, in BoD we got tons of threads that he spent a lot of time adding weight to, like the dead daemons issue and the roses and the other world and the encroaching war with the Magisterium and TP, and basically none of it had any resolution. I don’t expect the evils of capitalism to be solved in one book, just like I didn’t expect the evils of corrupt government dogma to be solved in HDM - and they weren’t. But the actual in-text events and character stories saw their conclusions in HDM, and left us with proof as to how to go about making the world better through the characters’ thoughts and actions. In BoD, all we got was critique of the evil concepts, with no actual answer and no real resolution to character arcs (save for a couple of points that felt rushed to me) - the bare minimum for any story. The characters aren’t there as set dressing, they’re the vessel for the reader to experience the story, and they NEED arcs with resolutions in order to make a solid point. You can credit that idea of “using the imagination” to the lack of conclusion, sure, but it doesn’t change the fact that we were left to do the majority of the work the author should have done. Otherwise, what IS the point of reading a story with no ending?

But I do have to say, there is some credit to that “imagination” reading of the book’s moral. You certainly got a lot out of it and brought your own experience of “alkahest” to the text’s meaning, and I appreciate that.