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The Book of Dust Volume 3 – The Rose Field by Philip Pullman Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK ISBN: 9780241458693 Number of pages: 640 • Sam Hawksmoor

After ploughing through 640 pages of The Rose Field, I can report I enjoyed it immensely.
It seems an age since I read Volume 2 and can barely remember the nilhistic philosophic books that Lyra read that caused such a depression in Lyra and a drastic rift between herself and Pan. It led Pan to go off in search of Lyra's 'lost imagination’.

The Rose Field starts with a bang and keeps going to the end. Will Lyra ever find Pan? Will Pan ever get back to Lyra? We are in strange lands all undergoing difficult tensions as the Magisterium and its leader Delamere build new alliances and plan a major war against the forces of libralism. We meet strange birds with lion’s claws and a mysterious man in a coffee house, who seems to control the entire financial system of the East. It’s a rare thing, an exotic location with fantastical creatures with a different perspective on what really matters in this world. (Gold as it happens). Lyra poses as a Queen and gains an ally, an endlessly resourceful sherpa who poses as a guide, but is most definitely more than he claims to be.

There are some inconsistencies surrounding daemons. There is an earlier mention of a plague that strikes people who come into contact with the red dome – then is forgotten (the Dome is a special portal to where the precious rose oil comes from deep in the desert) - and there are many interesting parallels with the changes happening in our own world with fascism on the rise once again and its destructive forces. The Magisterium is an evil cult that seeks to dominate the world.

Pan and Malcom Polestead (who rescued Lyra in book one) are really the stars of the story, but Pullman takes great care to build up new vivid characters with a few swift sentences and make us care about them before they too are tossed aside and Lyra or Pan plough on to greater seperate adventures. Death and violence can strike at any time. The Witches reappear as the Magisterium seek to close all access to other worlds by mapping and violently closing the gaps.

Some might cavil at the close relationship between Malcom and Lyra, but Pullman pulls back from anything sexual between them, we know Lyra still deeply regrets her involuntary parting from Will.

This is an endlessly thrilling read. But I sense that Philip Pullman grew exhausted in the last moments and could have continued on for a chapter more and explained some of those loose ends and anomalies - and perhaps given Lyra a new quest for us to fill in for ourselves.

Can't believe it's 30 years since Lyra began her life journey with Northern Lights. This is a tour de force. 

Book 2 reviewed here from 2019

© Sam Hawksmoor – Nov 30th 2025

author of Whatever Happened to Genie Magee? from The Repossession of Genie Magee series