La Belle Sauvage

 

Image credit: Amazon.au

One silver lining to being sick is having the time to sit and have unlimited hours of reading. In this modern world were there is so much to do and so much media to consume, the magic and voyeuristic luxury of getting lost in another world is often hard to accomplish. Not when you’re on the slow mend from Covid! For 5 days I suffered from a brain fog so thick no written word could penetrate it, but now the fog is clearing and while I’m sill on the mend, I have the blessed relief of being able to curl up and get entirely immersed in a different world. In record time, I have just closed the cover of La Belle Sauvage, the first instalment in Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust series, a prequel to His Dark Materials.

The book follows unlikely hero Malcolm Polstead, a boy working in his parents’ tavern and spending his free time playing with his daemon and sailing his beloved canoe, La Belle Sauvage. One day, Malcolm’s quiet life is upended when he spies a strange man drop a strange something and then taken away by some sinister figures. Not long after that, a baby girl named Lyra is brought to the oratory near the tavern and Malcolm finds himself strongly bound to her. More mysteries pop up concerning the strange man, a secret message, and the baby, and soon a disaster occurs that forces Malcolm to act beyond his years as tries to get Lyra back to her father while evading some sinister pursuers. 

I can’t express it in words, but there is something just so compelling about Pullman’s writing. I found myself absolutely steamrolling through His Dark Materials and this series is exactly the same. The world is so rich and fully fleshed-out, the prose so simple and embracing that hours seem to go by in a single blink! That’s the power of Pullman.

Unlike The Northern Lights and the subsequent books, La Belle Sauvage is definitely intended for a more mature audience. Still technically YA fiction the more dramatic and sinister parts of the story are circled by implications of adult dangers such as sexual violence and emotional trauma. The excitement of the book comes from its being a delightful mixture of genres: it begins as an innocent adventure story with the child protagonists out on a hero’s quest, but quickly escalates into a sort of noir-spy-thriller-chase-story. At the same time, it’s a coming-of-age tale with Malcolm being thrust into maturity almost violently. 

Image credit: philip-pullman.com

Even though, from an YA-adventure-novel point of view, not a lot of exiting external events happen, the story itself is so compelling in the suspense and anxiety and hope that it creates that you find yourself flicking through pages as fast as if a great, exciting battle were taking place. And in true Pullman fashion, we are left on a cliff-hanger that has me hankering to rush out and buy the next instalment. 

Filled with action, adventure, suspense, and even a little romance La Belle Sauvage is a great introductory novel to what promises to be an exciting series. 

Author: Philip Pullman, 2017

Published: David Fickling Books (London), 2017

La Belle Sauvage is the first instalment in Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy, a prequel series to His Dark Materials.