The Book of Dust Volume Three The Rose Field by Philip Pullman

I manage screen time by reading paperback books and, very occasionally, hardback books if they are very special. One such book is the final story from Lyra’s universe. The first three books that make up the His Dark Materials trilogy were ones I read to my children. We followed the adventures of Lyra and Will to the surprisingly bittersweet end. The Book of Dust trilogy started with La Belle Sauvage, continued with The Secret Commonwealth and ends with The Rose Field.

The Story

We pick up the story with Lyra and Pantalaimon, her daemon, separated and searching for answers both inward and outward. Lyra is trying to get to the Red Building and Pan is trying to find her imagination. The story brings in The Magisterium, the organised religion of Pullman’s story, under the subtle influence of Marcus Delamere who has found a way to reshape the organisation so that it acts to his will. He is looking for Lyra but he isn’t the only one. Malcolm, the young hero of La Belle Sauvage is searching for her so that he can once again be her protector, but with the desperate hope that he can be more despite the 11 year age gap. Olivier Bonneville, the son of the man killed by Malcolm 20 years earlier is tracking both of them to exact revenge for the killing of his father and the theft of his alethiometer, which he uses to search for answers to benefit himself and others, as long as those others are useful to him. The cast of human characters also include Alice, Malcolm’s companion through the dangers of two decades earlier, Abel Ionidies, the fixer and guide who is so much more than he seems on the surface and Leila Pervani, his old colleague who works for the Magisterium. As well as the human characters, the Witches from the North return and we meet the Gryphons, a race of immensely proud winged creatures who value only gold and those who can supply it and work with it.

It is a world of shifting alliances with people who are loyal to no one apart from themselves, people who are loyal only to those in power and those who are caught up in the games that everyone else is playing. I realised after about a hundred pages that Pullman was in fact writing one of those spy stories that were so popular in the past. At so many points in the story, you are suspicious of the people who say they have Lyra’s best interests at heart. We see her being threatened with death, imprisonment and the worst kind of assault and without Pantalaimon by her side she is literally half the person she used to be. To be separated from your daemon is against the nature of the world and she is looked on with fear, anger, and despised by those who see her as being against nature. She is, however, protected by a loose confederation of allies who often step in when everything seems to be lost. The Magisterium has found out about the doors between the Worlds that Will opened and they are desperate to close them as the very existence of them and of Dust itself disproves the entire basis of their religious beliefs. All of the characters are trying to get to the Red Building, some to get through the door within, some to destroy that door and others to see if they can control what is on the other side. What awaits them if they do get there?

My Thoughts

I wanted to race through this book, but at the same time I wanted to savour it. The final story of any series is the one you want to read but do so with the bittersweet knowledge that this is it. The world and the story will finally be at an end, and you know that Pullman will not make the ending a nice neat one tied up in a bow. I am very happy to say that the ending is both satisfying and open ended. It is one that you could never see coming but one that is also absolutely true to everything that preceded it.

Pullman has made no secret of his distaste for organised religion or of his anger at what human beings are doing to the Earth in the name of profit and power. To him, all those at the head of these organisations are deeply flawed, deeply unpleasant and deeply wrong. What he has done here is to make that viewpoint it an integral part of his world. Like Terry Pratchett he uses the world he has created to reflect our own world back to us. The way that no one in power can be trusted and the way that allegiances shift for all but the most fanatical rings so true and roots his spy story and his fantastic world in the reality of our own. However, in this last of his six books, written over a span of 30 years, he occasionally allows a few chinks of light to shine through showing that even in the darkness there is still hope even it is far away and very faint.

I read the first two books of the trilogy, which were published eight and six years ago respectively, recently to prepare myself for The Rose Field and I strongly recommend that you do the same. To plunge straight into this book would be too overwhelming in terms of the story otherwise. Philip Pullman has written one of the greatest series of books ever published and I will return to them again sometime and definitely understand them in a slightly different way.