La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One (Book of Dust, #1)

by Philip Pullman

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Malcolm has heard strange rumors about the baby with the nuns.

It's said she's the daughter of a powerful man and the woman who started the League of St. Alexander.  It's said the CCD is looking for her.  It's said she's the answer to a prophecy.  When Malcolm sees the little girl, he doesn't see what the big deal is.  She's cute, but she's just a baby - how could she be so dangerous.

Malcolm is certainly about to find out as he is whisked away into a world of secrets and spies.  When the biggest flood London has ever seen comes to wipe everything away, it's up to Malcolm to make sure baby Lyra is safe - not only from the water, but from the men and women chasing after her.  Especially the man whose daemon is missing a leg....

La Belle Sauvage is not The Golden Compass, but it is quite enjoyable.

Like many of the people reading this book, I have a history with Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.  I read them growing up... over and over again... and Lyra and Will are a part of my heart.  When La Belle Sauvage was announced as a prequel, I was a bit skeptical about the choice of setting, but immediately pre-ordered it because of course I was going to read this book... I've only been waiting about 20 years for it.  If a reader is expecting for find Lyra and Pan back in all their glory, think again.

THAT SAID, lets talk about Malcolm and Asta, because they're also delightful new characters.  Mal isn't this big, brave child - he's the sort that simply does the things that need doing.  The things he feels are right.  This quality is so important to me in Lyra's character, and it was amazing to see it in Malcolm.  These children are regular children who see a bad situation, are very careful, and do the right thing as best they can.  Malcolm is good to his parents and kind to baby Lyra.  He is helpful to the nuns when he visits them.  He does what he needs to do, but he doesn't do it was a self-righteous flash and flare... something fairly rare in heroes.

It's an awfully long book.

This is not a complaint, necessarily... more of an observation.  La Belle Sauvage comes in at nearly 500 pages, but most of that is just travel.  There are little adventures along the way, and they are all interesting in their own right, but they are pointless.  They do nothing to move along the plot - they merely distract the reader while we wait for the trio to reach their destination.  There were sections when I found myself asking "Wait, what's going on?  Who is this?  Why do I care?" which is not particularly good.

For as much as I liked Malcolm and grew to like Alice... I just felt like this book was really draggy and lacked the overall purpose that pulled you into The Golden Compass and the other books.

Plot of The Golden Compass: stop the horrible people who are severing daemons!
Plot of La Belle Sauvage:  make sure Lyra stays safe.

No wonder it's a bit draggy and underwhelming.  It's fun and interesting, don't get me wrong, but I felt strongly that it didn't live up to the original series.  It felt like a quite long sub-book, like the novellas Once Upon a Time in the North and Lyra's Oxford.

Fans of His Dark Materials may be disappointed.

I am not, by any means, saying that you should not read this book.  You should.  Malcolm is great, Alice is great, and baby Pan will make your heart melt into a puddle of goo.  But you absolutely cannot go into this book expecting a brilliant revival of His Dark Materials.  It doesn't happen.  Not even a little.  I think even the most open-minded readers will fall into this feeling as though it lacks something.

I feel it's also interesting to know... the second book in the Book of Dust trilogy is called The Secret Commonwealth.  It's not set after this one, so we'll never know what happened precisely with Oxford Street or The League of St. Alexander or Mal and Asta.  It's set twenty years in the future, long after the events of all the currently published books in this world.  This really further cements my feeling that this are extended novellas and I have mixed feelings about the whole thing.

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