A review of the novel “The Rose Field” by Philip Pullman
Published in 2025, this is the third part of the trilogy “The Book Of Dust”, following the original trilogy of “His Dark Materials”. The interval between publication of the first and second novels in the “Dust” trilogy was only two years, but the wait between the second and third novels was an uncomfortable six years. Pullman explains this as a result of both the global pandemic and his ageing (he was 79 in 2025).
“The Rose Field” is the sequel to the second book of the second trilogy, set some 10 or so years after the first trilogy. Almost the whole of the text is set in the same universe as that occupied by Lyra Belacqua/Silvertongue, which we were originally told is like our own universe “but different in many ways”, and the narrative picks up exactly at the conclusion of the second novel in the trilogy “The Book Of Dust” titled “The Secret Commonwealth”.
All the leading characters – Lyra herself, her estranged daemon Pantalaimon, her close friend Malcolm Polstead, the wicked head of the Magisterium Marcel Delamare, and the evil reader of the alethiometer Olivier Bonneville – are heading to the Far East, looking for The Red Building and The Rose Field, both of which are connected to this thing called ‘dust’. We meet some wonderful characters and there is plenty of action in this most enjoyable adventure which brings to an end both the “His Dark Materials” trilogy of 1,300 pages and “The Book Of Dust” trilogy of a further 1,900 pages (not to mention four, very short novellas).
The six books represent a brilliant and monumental endeavour, a veritable tour de force in storytelling with so many amazing characters and fascinating ideas. But “The Rose Field” does not take us much further forward in understanding the nature of ‘dust’. It seems that it is “related closely to human consciousness” and that it “permeates everything in the universe”. So: “There is consciousness everywhere”.
In Pullman’s view, the manifestation of ‘dust’ is ‘imagination’ or free thinking. He is fiercely opposed to organised religion, especially the Catholic Church, which is represented in the novels by the Magisterium, the opponent of dust, imagination and free thinking. So the notion of ‘dust’ in Pullman’s writing is ambiguous which is intentional. We are supposed to think.