Philip Pullman - La Belle Sauvage

I still remember the Christmas that I first read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series - a mad rush to the bookshop before it closed on Christmas Eve to make sure that I had the final volume before the holidays began. The trilogy is probably one of the best young adult series ever written and I shall never tire of recommending them. La Belle Sauvage is the first volume of a new trilogy - this one set a decade or so before the start of the original books and serves as both an origin story of Lyra Belacqua the hero of those stories and as a further fleshing out of the parallel Earth that they are set on.

But it is also a bloody good read. We have two new heroes and their daemons, Malcolm Polstead and his dæmon, Asta, who live with his parents in their Oxford pub and Alice, a few years older than Malcolm and in her grumpy rudeness she presents a neat foil to the honest and soft spoken Malcolm. Thrown together by chance and the need to protect the baby Lyra, these two go on an epic journey and their relationship is transformed. It's an exciting adventure with some classic evil characters and organisations each trying to stop the children and capture Lyra. But I was struck by how wonderful Malcolm and Alice were written. Alice in particular is a brilliantly portrayed young woman, simultaneously confident and wary, angry and loving. Both of them are resourceful in a way that I imagine most young adult readers would like to be, and yet their mission nearly comes apart under the pressure of their enemies, the nature and the more fantastical elements of their world.

Pullman fleshes out a lot here too. For fans of the original series he answers some questions about the relationship between humans and their daemons though, to a slight extent, I thought he ret-conned a few details here and there. It is a fast passed novel though and it would be easier to miss some of Pullman's deeper musings on spirit and soul. As previously religion plays a major role, here the equivalent of the Catholic Church forming a powerful anti-democratic force in society. In some brilliantly written scenes that send a chill through the reader's spine school children are encouraged to inform on adults who don't conform to the Church's needs. Parents and teachers are sent to "reeducation camps" as a doctrine and personal settling of scores is used viciously by some of the children. This was one of several genuinely tense and frightening parts of the book.

The problem with returning to an existing fantasy world for an author is that its hard to recreate that sense of wonder and excitement the reader gets from learning about its differences and its similarities. But if La Belle Sauvage is not as brilliant as the books in the Dark Materials series, its' mostly because they were such amazing works. Again, highly recommended.

Related Reviews

Pullman - The Subtle Knife
Pullman - The Amber Spyglass
Pullman - Northern Lights
Pullman - The Ruby in the Smoke