Gary's Reviews > La Belle Sauvage

From the moment its existence was announced, there hasn’t been a novel I’ve looked forward to more than La Belle Sauvage, the first volume in The Book of Dust, Philip Pullman’s prequel trilogy to His Dark Materials. I had little doubt the book would be good; the pleasant surprise is that it turned out to be great, if not quite the unparalleled classic that is The Golden Compass/Northern Lights. Set a decade or so before, La Belle Sauvage is the story of eleven-year-old Malcolm, who, with the help of teenager Alice, must protect an uncannily charismatic infant named Lyra from a psychotic disgraced scientist, agents of the Consistorial Court of Discipline, and an extraordinary natural disaster with fantastical and frightening implications. Like most prequels, it is best understood in the context of the stories written before it, but new readers should enjoy it all the same - it is a classically structured chivalric romance, in which a hero devoted to his ideals sets out on an adventure full of wonder and thrills. La Belle Sauvage is often dark and scary and violent, though still appropriate for (less squeamish) middle grade readers.