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La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman review round-up: His Dark Materials prequel is worth the wait

Philip Pullman fans have waited over a decade for this moment, and it seems as if they won't be disappointed.

The reviews are out for La Belle Sauvage, the first instalment in an entirely new trilogy penned by Pullman entitled The Book of Dust; described by him not as a sequel or prequel, but as an "equal", set to stand beside the story and characters of His Dark Materials, with Lyra still "at the centre of the story".

La Belle Sauvage, however, essentially works as a prequel. We're introduced to the 11-year-old Malcolm Polstead, who saves an infant Lyra from drowning, before becoming a kind of protector to her - rescuing her from a myriad of threats, both political and personal.

There are, to the delight of fans, several cameos from characters known from His Dark Materials, including Lyra's own parents Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter.

Critics have been raving about La Belle Sauvage's return to Brytain's Oxford and to Pullman's lyrical, allegorical style. Here's a selection of reviews:

Lucy Scholes - The Independent - 4/5

Fans of His Dark Materials will find themselves joyfully immersed in a familiar world of daemons, alethiometers, the evil Magisterium, friendly witches and foul night-ghasts, yet also delighted by Pullman’s new material; meanwhile, awaiting first time readers is all the pleasure of commencing their own journey into this most captivating of universes at the very beginning of Lyra’s story.

Marina Warner - The Guardian

Pullman’s immense powers of kinaesthetic visualisation keep the story pulsing on an epic scale as enchanted allegory combines with a full-on retelling of the Biblical story of the flood: defences cave in and banks break under roiling storm clouds, and the familiar world of Oxford and its meadows is drowned.

Sam Leith - The Telegraph - 5/5

This being a prequel, we can take the set-up – the workings of Dust and alethiometers and daemons and all that jazz – more or less as read, even if those revelations lie in the future for the characters in the book.

Yet Pullman, generously, makes sure that you can come to this one fresh without having to read, or reread, what went before. The great metaphysical edifice of His Dark Materials is, for the most part, in the background.

Marianne Levy - iNews

Such is the sense of slow dread and the liminal nature of the second half, that this isn’t, yet, quite the romping adventure we might have expected. But then, these are dark, uncertain times. Pullman has given them the brilliant, disturbing book they deserve.

Sarah Lyall - The New York Times

La Belle Sauvage sometimes lags. Curiously for such a gifted storyteller, Pullman includes long stretches of flat dialogue in which Malcolm essentially repeats information he has already heard to new people who have not yet heard it.

Katy Waldman - Slate

I am confident in pronouncing that people will love the first volume of Philip Pullman’s trilogy, The Book of Dust, with the same helpless vehemence that stole over them when The Golden Compass came out in the mid-’90s, or even when they first met their partners or held their newborn children.

Caitlin PenzeyMoog - AV Club

That world is succinctly described in the preface to His Dark Materials as “like ours, but different in many ways,” and it’s with great pleasure that La Belle Sauvage slips effortlessly back into Pullman’s richly imagined Brytain.

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