Philip Pullman Books in Order: His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust Explained

Philip Pullman's world of daemons, alethiometers and parallel universes has grown into one of the most ambitious series in modern fantasy, and with The Rose Field published on 23 October 2025, the story is now finally complete. This guide is for anyone who loved the BBC adaptation, half-remembers reading Northern Lights at school, or simply wants to know exactly what order to read Lyra Silvertongue's story in — from her childhood in Oxford to her adventures as a young woman. Below you'll find the full reading order, what each book covers, and where the series sits now that it has reached its conclusion.

Two trilogies, one story

Pullman's saga is really made up of two connected trilogies. The first, His Dark Materials, follows Lyra as a child. The second, The Book of Dust, is not a simple prequel or sequel — it begins before Lyra is born, then jumps forward to pick up her story as a young adult after the events of the first trilogy. Readers often assume the two trilogies should be read side by side or mixed together, but the most straightforward approach is to read His Dark Materials first, then move on to The Book of Dust.

His Dark Materials: the original trilogy

The three His Dark Materials novels were published across the 1990s and into 2000: Northern Lights (1995), The Subtle Knife (1997) and The Amber Spyglass (2000). Together they follow Lyra Belacqua, a girl growing up in an Oxford very like our own except that every person's soul lives outside their body as an animal companion called a daemon.

• Northern Lights — Lyra sets out from Jordan College to the Arctic to rescue her friend Roger and uncover the truth about a mysterious substance called Dust.
• The Subtle Knife — Lyra meets Will Parry, a boy from our world, and the story expands into multiple parallel universes.
• The Amber Spyglass — the trilogy's conclusion, which brings Lyra and Will's story to its end and resolves the battle at the heart of the series.

These three books work well as a set for readers who want to start the whole saga properly, and you'll find them collected together in our Fantasy range alongside other long-running series.

The Book of Dust: the follow-up trilogy

The Book of Dust is where things get more interesting structurally. It's a trilogy in its own right, but it doesn't run in a straight line alongside His Dark Materials — instead it bookends it.

La Belle Sauvage (2017)

The first volume is set before Northern Lights, when Lyra is a baby. It follows Malcolm Polstead, an eleven-year-old boy who becomes caught up in a flood and a plot to protect the infant Lyra from agents of the Magisterium. It works as a prequel, filling in events and characters that are only hinted at in the original trilogy.

The Secret Commonwealth (2019)

The second volume jumps forward dramatically. It's set around seven years after the events of The Amber Spyglass, and twenty years after La Belle Sauvage, with Lyra now a young woman studying at Oxford, estranged from her daemon Pantalaimon and drawn into a new, more adult conflict involving secrets, roses and the nature of Dust itself. This is the point where the series shifts from a story about childhood to one about early adulthood, and it reads noticeably differently in tone from the first trilogy.

The Rose Field (2025)

Published on 23 October 2025, The Rose Field is the third and final volume of The Book of Dust, bringing the storylines begun in La Belle Sauvage and continued in The Secret Commonwealth to their conclusion. With its release, Pullman's saga — begun with Northern Lights three decades earlier — is now a complete six-book story.

The complete reading order

If you want to read the whole saga in the order that makes the most narrative sense, here it is:

1. Northern Lights
2. The Subtle Knife
3. The Amber Spyglass
4. La Belle Sauvage
5. The Secret Commonwealth
6. The Rose Field

Some readers prefer to slot La Belle Sauvage in before Northern Lights, since it's set earlier in the chronology and introduces Malcolm as a child. Either approach works, but reading His Dark Materials as a complete unit first tends to make the emotional weight of The Secret Commonwealth and The Rose Field land harder, since you already know exactly what Lyra has been through and what she's lost.

Do you need to read His Dark Materials first?

Technically, La Belle Sauvage can be read as a standalone, since it's set before the events of Northern Lights and follows different characters for much of its length. But The Secret Commonwealth and The Rose Field lean heavily on knowledge of Lyra and Will's story from the original trilogy, including the ending of The Amber Spyglass, so skipping straight to The Book of Dust isn't recommended if you want the full emotional impact.

What about the TV adaptation?

The BBC and HBO's His Dark Materials series adapted the original trilogy across three television seasons, introducing a new generation of viewers to Lyra, Pantalaimon and the alethiometer. If you've watched the show and want to go deeper into the world, the books remain the fullest version of the story, with far more detail on the parallel universes, the theology underpinning the Magisterium, and secondary characters who get less screen time on television.

Where to find the books

Whether you're starting from scratch or filling the gaps in a part-finished collection, you'll find brand-new copies of Pullman's novels at reduced prices across our site. Our Fantasy collection is the best starting point for the series as a whole, while fans who want the look of a complete set might prefer browsing our Box Sets & Collections range. If you're buying for a teenage reader, the series also sits comfortably within our Young Adult range, and for slightly younger readers working their way up to the trilogy, our Ages 9-12 collection has plenty of accessible fantasy to bridge the gap.

As with all our stock, these are brand-new books sold at prices well below RRP, with fast UK delivery, so there's no need to hunt through secondhand listings to put together a full set.

Is the series finished now?

With The Rose Field's publication in October 2025, The Book of Dust trilogy is complete. For anyone who has followed the series since Northern Lights first appeared three decades ago, or who's only recently discovered it through the television adaptation, now is a good moment to read the whole thing in order, from beginning to end, with no more instalments to wait for.

Final thoughts

Pullman's saga rewards patience: the three His Dark Materials novels build a complete, self-contained story, while The Book of Dust trilogy deepens and complicates it, ending on a note that was over a decade in the making. Whether you're introducing a new reader to Lyra's world or finally closing out a series you started years ago, reading all six books in order — Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass, La Belle Sauvage, The Secret Commonwealth and The Rose Field — is the best way to experience it as Pullman intended.

Browse our full range of fantasy fiction to start or complete your collection, or head to Bestsellers to see what other UK readers are picking up this autumn.