Review: #811
Title: La Belle Sauvage
Series: The Book of Dust - 1st book
Author: Philip Pullman
Comments: Set as a distant prequel to His Dark Materials trilogy, it follows the young boy Malcolm, who works at the inn his family owns, the Trout. At the nearby priory, a young baby is left in the nuns’ care and Malcom develops a fascination for her, Lyra. The novel is split into two parts and the first is a slow build up introducing and developing Malcolm’s relationships with all the characters, as well as how the world functions as it currently is. Knowledge of His Dark Materials is not essential but it would give you a better idea and understand the significance of various events. The second part is a lot more tense as catastrophe strikes and Malcolm is on the run with a dangerous man chasing him. The second half is also when it starts to peter off to a more fantastical setting that seems at odds with the rest of the novel. Malcolm encounters unusual beings that strongly hint of the supernatural or the dead. Nevertheless, the storytelling is excellent and throughout the whole novel, it tells an engrossing story even though there isn’t much action. It is the fact that you can seeing the political effects from Malcolm’s eyes that drives the plot forward. The anti-religious theme is stronger than even the previous series and can become overbearing a lot of the time. You can tell that this is the first book in the new trilogy because there is so much world building and also a fairly hollow ending considering how much has happened up until that point. It felt like the destination didn’t make up for all the things that occurred in the journey. At its core, this is a journey about Malcolm and how his fate intertwines with Lyra’s and while the beginning and end felt dragged out, the middle was breathtaking in its suspenseful atmosphere and a twinge of horror.
Rating: 7.5/10