Reviews

The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage (Book of Dust, Volume 1) by Philip Pullman

brittspry's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

smateer73's review against another edition

4.0

I enjoyed this book. I felt it was a good companion novel to the His Dark Materials series. All the characters are well developed and the story moves quickly.

trin's review against another edition

3.0

Beautiful, beautiful writing, but suffers rather from prequelitis -- one knows going in exactly where Lyra is going to ultimately end up. Plotwise, this book is also hindered by being in the majority a journey story -- and then, and then -- and moreover, surprisingly unclear in its worldbuilding and character motivations.

Spoiler

Bonneville, the main -- non-institutional -- villain is fascinating, and intensely, often viscerally frightening; his pursuit of Malcolm and Alice is very Night of the Hunter, which I adore. But it's never clear why he's after them or what he wants with Lyra.

I'm sure much of this will become more apparent in the next volume, but in a way, Pullman gives the reader frustratingly little for a novel of 400+ pages.

But oh, the writing, the world. Daemons.

popefacekillah's review

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

flintlocklane's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional

3.75

This book is definitely stranger and darker than I remembered it being

outoftheblue14's review against another edition

4.0

Mi sembra decisamente un prequel... la storia di come Lyra è arrivata al Jordan College.
Mi ha messo una gran voglia di rileggere La bussola d'oro :)

bookishgenerations's review against another edition

adventurous challenging medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

daumari's review against another edition

4.0

Unlike other coming-of-age fantasy books where we spend a lot of time camping, this time we're on a canoe, floating/paddling towards London for... a while.

Overall, I liked it and baby daemon Pan is adorable but I'm curious how this second trilogy will go- is it all prequel, or do we have a time jump in The Secret Commonwealth? (I uh, did a web search and saw some age things) The tricky thing with prequels is we know where they're generally headed, but it's nice to spend more time in a world from our childhood.

Dr. Hannah Relf reminds me of Dr. Mary Malone in her mentorship of young Malcolm, and that's probably intentional.

Definite darkness in this one (TW: sexual assault referenced and implied, also murder) but the original ALSO was surprisingly dark for a middle-grade-to-YA.

stephs_bookshelf's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

50pence's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Gun violence and Violence