The Book of Dust

First of all, despite the cover art, the series name is "The Book of Dust" and the book's name is "La Belle Sauvage" (the name of our protagonist's canoe) which is good, because I don't think I could read another page about their time in a canoe. From the beginning to the end, nothing much really changes or gets resolved. Just a lot of time hiding in a canoe and stopping at various enchanted ... islands? (I think I've read this book before, by Homer.) There are some really dark themes and nightmare inducing scenes in here too which takes that of His Dark Materials to a new level. All that said, I'm conflicted because the writing is really good, the characters are complex and develop throughout the book, and I want to see Lyra again (though hopefully as more than a helpless baby), so, assuming he ditches the canoe, I will be continuing the series.

A solid beginning to a prequel series. It kept my interest the whole way, even though ultimately I knew what the outcome had to be, since it's a prequel.

The central characters were believable to me as children and teens. Of course that was some time ago for me, so make of that what you will. There were some YA / coming-of-age topics, but I would not say they were central to the story. There is some violence, but it is not too gory / repetitive. I respected the way the author conveys the effects of violence on the characters, both as doers and receivers.

Some of the "side-quests" in the last third of the book could be taken either as homage to traditional fairy stories, or as cliché, depending on how cranky the reader is feeling.

My overall impression was that although the Christian(?) Church was the overarching villain, this did not feel as much like a secularist screed as "His Dark Materials". There was some pointed material about the mechanics of (creeping?) totalitarian rule that I thought made a broader political point.

It makes me sad to say this, but, I disliked this book about as much as I enjoyed the His Dark Materials trilogy. This book is set 12 years or so before the beginning of that fascinating series. While I like the idea of learning about events that lead up to The Golden Compass and beyond, I found this story wearyingly repetitive and, well, juvenile. Perhaps this means I’ve been spoiled by the likes of the Time Quintet, the Harry Potter books and, yes, His Dark Materials, which I loved despite being considerably older than the target audience. They didn’t actually feel like they were written for younger readers so much as they felt accessible to readers of any age. La Belle Sauvage, however, feels like it’s best left to those in the early throes of puberty and possibly also those who romanticize or wax nostalgic about that period of their lives. Though I have no objection to romance in the stories I read, I am decidedly neither and instead found the early heteronormative hormonal stirrings herein to be unsubtle at best and distracting from the actual tale at worst. I wish I could say that it was enough to simply be back in the world of humans and their daemons. That’s what I was looking forward to most about reading La Belle Sauvage. But I’m afraid there wasn’t enough meat on the bones of this story to make that so.

La Belle sauvage is the first book of a prequel trilogy to [b:His Dark Materials|18116|His Dark Materials (His Dark Materials #1-3)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442329494s/18116.jpg|1943518] that will show how Lyra Belacqua came to be at Jordan College in Oxford at the beginning of [b:Northern Lights|70947|Northern Lights (His Dark Materials, #1)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327235223s/70947.jpg|1536771]/[b:The Golden Compass|119322|The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)|Philip Pullman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1505766203s/119322.jpg|1536771]. It follows the adventures of Malcolm Polstead, who works at an inn in Oxford, and his coworker Alice, as they bring the McGuffin to London.
On its own, La Belle sauvage is a fairly ordinary young adult fantasy adventure — for young adults of all ages, I hasten to add. The first part sets up the characters and situations, and the second is a series of adventures in increasingly-fantastic settings. This is quite enjoyable, but not really out of the ordinary.
However, this book is clearly laying the groundwork for the next two books, and I am looking forward to reading them.

I...don't know. I might come back and give more points later. But His Dark Materials together are probably the most formative books in my life, and the bar might just be too high. Golden Compass was Just Another Fantasy novel when I read it, about the same time that Subtle Knife came out. But the six months between reading Golden Compass and Subtle Knife were very formative in my life (it was the transition from middle to high school) and so in many ways, reading Subtle Knife is deeply and fundamentally associated with starting to see symbolism in books, starting to ask existential questions about myself. Amber Spyglass was published just after my freshman year of college, and I read it multiple times back-to-back that summer, pondering the purposes of existence. Two years later, I saw each half of the stage production multiple times in the London National Theatre, and did the backstage tour twice. I have signatures of all of the actors. The altheiometer inset is framed on my wall, and it's not a coincidence that my avatar here is an altheiometer. HDM really formed who I am, how I interact with the world and how I read.

La Belle Sauvage, for now, at least, is Just Another Fantasy Novel. I have some specific concerns: the female characters have basically no agency (a major disappointment, after Lyra); the antediluvian portion of the novel really drags, with a few Whizbang!Fantasy moments but no real depth and the opportunity to use Daemons and worldbuilding to make the villain hair-raisingly creepy instead of just lazily using rape to signal moral corruption was passed over. But honestly, I could overlook all of those. My biggest disappointment was that there just wasn't much there there. I don't know if it's me -- that I'm older and less malleable by a book -- whether this book really is shallow, or whether it's set-building and the best is yet to come...