Ais

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

by Philip Pullman

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in October 2017

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Ais said: " I loved this so much. There are likely spoilers below (though nothing significant).

Malcolm Polstead (also featured in Lyra's Oxford as an adult) is an 11 year old boy with a canoe, living with his parents at The Trout just outside Oxford. He is intel I loved this so much. There are likely spoilers below (though nothing significant).

Malcolm Polstead (also featured in Lyra's Oxford as an adult) is an 11 year old boy with a canoe, living with his parents at The Trout just outside Oxford. He is intelligent, honest and full of courage- three things he requires in large volumes as he steers his canoe through a flood of Biblical proportions toward London, in an effort to save Lyra's life.

When the first excerpt from the book was released some months back, my heart skipped a beat when there was a mention of Lord Asriel. Asriel is a character that really sticks in the head because he's so convoluted, such a mix of good and bad as all people are. As a child, it's easier to categorise Asriel but as an adult it is incredibly hard to do so and my sympathy for him has grown over the years. Experiencing his own efforts to see and save his daughter was a nice treat.

Malcolm as a character is also great- it's hard not to compare him to the Lyra of the future and the Will she comes to know and love. All three share some integral characteristics and I found myself sad that they could never meet as children. Malcom's relationship with Alice is really well built, moving from austere professionalism to a personal closeness that remains unanswered at the end of these specific pages.

The story is a slow mover- it builds and builds until the gush of the flood and even then, much time is spent in transit and exhaustion, cleverly showing the depths Malcolm and Alice must go to to keep Lyra safe. The overarching themes of Magisterium deviousness remain and the League of St Alexander is a brilliant mouthpiece for propaganda and a properly malicious construct. Finally, Pullman doesn't shirk from either extreme violence or shock tactics- there are constant swears in the text as well as mentions of sexual offences, meaning he reaches even beyond the quieter evils of His Dark Materials. I'm interested to see where he takes that in future books. I'm also interested in how he develops the human-daemon relationship and its variations, with a badly abused hyena the daemon of a man who outwardly doesn't seem to express anything that matches the hyena form.

Aside from the actual story, the sense of nostalgia- to be back in Lyra's Oxford- was a proper rush to the heart for someone who thought this world was in the reading past. Seeing where Lyra's alethiometer comes from is a nice surprise and I can't wait for the rest of The Book of Dust. ...more "

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— May 17, 2026 10:38AM

May 17, 2026 10:38AM · see review