Good afternoon everyone!
For the very first review on this blog, I will be reviewing The Book of Dust: Vol. 1 La Belle Sauvage by Phillip Pullman. This book really brought back the nostalgia I had when I read the His Dark Materials series. If you did not know, La Belle Sauvage is a prequel to the His Dark Materials series. The original series takes place in a world that looks familiar to ours, but with many differences. In my own words, it can be best described as Victorian England with a fantasy twist. It is a world controlled by a strict religious sect (very close to the Catholic Church) where the characters are followed by animal extensions of their souls called daemons. These daemons can change shape up until a certain age where they settle and stay in one form. Without going into too much detail, (I plan on re-reading the series in the near future) we are told the story of the struggle between the church, the rebellion and the search to understand the world. We are also introduced to Lyra who will be the series' center point.
But the rest of this review will focus on La Belle Sauvage, the first in what will hopefully be a new series the tells what happened before Lyra's epic journey through multiple worlds. Sauvage follows the journey of Malcolm Polsted, the son of an innkeeper in Oxford, his daemon Asta and his canoe, La Belle Sauvage. Malcolm finds his way into a secret war between the Church and science by overhearing the conversations of many mysterious figures that visit his father's inn. He becomes a spy for the resistance and finds out that the world is a lot more complicated than he thought. One such conversation involves a baby being protected by nuns at the nearby sanctuary. Lyra is at the center of contention between the Consistorial Court of Discipline (CCD) and a secret group of scientists and historians running counter to the CCD. Think of the CCD in terms of the Inquisition. You follow them or you mysteriously disappear.
Malcolm meets up with a host of characters from the original series as well as Alice, a girl that worked in Malcolm's family kitchen. After a great flood, Alice and Malcolm save Lyra and attempt to take her to her father, from whom she was separated as he was a murderer. We see the two grow as friends as they try their hardest to rescue Lyra.
The journey takes you through a series of emotions and leaves you wondering just what did the children actually see. Fairies? Giants? The Dead? This is one of the things I like about Pullman's work. It just crosses the line between reality and fantasy. Sauvage, while a fantasy book with clear fantasy elements, leaves you feeling like it could be your world. There is enough real-life elements to mingle Malcolm's world with your own. It is beautiful really, though I don't believe it is as powerful as his previous works. Hopefully in the upcoming books we will get a more thorough look into the world of Dust.
I give The Book of Dust: Volume 1 La Belle Sauvage a rating of 📖📖📖📖/5. I highly recommend this book for anyone who loves fantasy with a twist of real life. Also, if you liked His Dark Materials or like Phillip Pullman, this book will bring you back to a world you never knew you missed.
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