The Book of Dust is Phillip Pullman's sequel series to His Dark Materials. If I'm being completely honest, I was over the moon when the series was first announced, but I was left feeling a little lukewarm by the end of La Belle Sauvage.

The series takes place as a direct sequel to Lyra's Oxford, a short story written after the events of His Dark Materials. Lyra's Oxford is excellent, but this series is a sequel series.

The basic structure is that La Belle Sauvage is a prequel to the original series, and then The Secret Commonwealth and The Rose Field are sequels to the original series. So, in a way, the previous paragraph was a lie, but it's still true that Lyra's Oxford predates all, and it is sort of a generational change between the new series and this short-story.

In terms of writing quality, all of the books are written in an engaging manner. I don't fault Pullman's storytelling ability, which is undeniably excellent.

In the third book, though, I think we reach a point where the story becomes a bit bogged down without a proper resolution at the end. Without spoilers, I feel like the story itself resolves the A plot fine, but there are many threads that aren't picked up well. There are characters and elements that are introduced, but seemingly neglected or not commented upon after.

The undeniable truth about The Rose Field is that at some point, a threshold is crossed where plot threads are introduced that simply cannot or will not be resolved in this book. Therefore, to call The Rose Field complete is difficult. Up and until that point, things are being opened and closed relatively often. If you view a book like a credit card, you expect to run a balance up and pay it off, but by the end of The Rose Field, nobody has paid the final statement.

spoiler thoughts on The Book of Dust