Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - La Belle Sauvage

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

12 reviews

nessynoname's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

The first half of the book I was on board with. It sets up a very grounded story of a callow young boy becoming involved with spywork in a time of tenuous ideological conflict, quite in league with what one might come to expect having read Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. I think someone else described the 2nd half of the book something like a whimsical Homerian Odyssey, random vignettes brushing with supernatural beings and scenarios and then moving on, and, yeah, that would be one of the more charitable ways to put it. The two halves are quite disparate to an IMO distractable degree.

In the first half of the book, I thought the subplot of the Consistorial Court recruiting literal schoolchildren to be their morality police, and the way it upended the dynamics of the school, was really fascinating. At the same time, I found Pullman’s signature anti-organized religion message kind of heavy handed this time. For the life of me I do not recall the adherents of the Church in Lyra’s World being explicitly specified as Christians/followers of Jesus in the entirity of the His Dark Materials series, (the Magisterium is the name of a real-world office of the Catholic Church so the writing is kind of on the wall about it, but stay with me.) Obviously, they would be Christians by name in Will’s World because Will’s World is our world but I somehow thought Lyra’s world lacked the Christ figure. That is apparently not the case and I found it kind of jarring to hear Malcolm recite real world Bible stories and for an entire subplot of the church sanctioning a league of morality police school children encouraged to snitch on their own sinful heathan families so they could prove their love and loyalty to Jesus.

Another hurdle for me was the whiplash of trying to figure out what the actual age rating of this book is. La Belle Sauvage is darker and interacts with more mature topics by orders of magnitude over His Dark Materials. Even though I was still sort of hung up on my ‘edgy middle readers’ framework of this world (the age rating of the original HDM,) discovering the book was actually categorized with a YA rating temporarily assuaged me when I was reading about the subtle political maneuverings of a spy organization and the dense lessons of philosophy Dr. Relf imparts on Malcolm, and then also, you know, the religiously brainwashed child spies. Then I got to the pedophillic sex criminal who wants to steal and infant from a pair of 11-year-olds I was just very bewildered and sort of aghast. I don’t want to think of myself as a pearl-clutcher, but I honestly think these topics would be murky even in an adult novel. Forget the young adult audience, Bonneville made *me* uncomfortable, and not in the way that is a compliment to a written villain.

And then, as was said, the 2nd half, when the flood begins and the two children and their infant charge paddle around in a canoe, evading a murderer/rapist, and also have run ins with bizarre, dream-like fairytale beings that don’t really have any explained basis in the worldbuilding? They just kind of happen? I don’t know. The 2nd half really started to lose me. I had trouble paying attention and understanding what was going on. There is one final coup de grace right at the end during the climax where there is a not explicitly stated and pretty well implied rape scene (at the very least a scene of physical assault with sexual undertones) immediately followed up by a murder and my brain just kind of blue screened. I’m just really not sure what to think.

The first half is a really solid and intriguing narrative with some interesting things to say, just with some bizarrely heavy topics sprinkled in, and then the 2nd half just kind of goes off the rails. Yeesh.

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dannilmp's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

While La Belle Sauvage was a good story in itself and I enjoyed the connection back to the His Dark materials set, I must admit it has been a while since I read the original trilogy so I cannot remember the importance of a character named Malcom. I enjoyed watching Malcom mature through the decisions and trials that he faces.

I still think this series maintains a level of mysticism similar to the original trilogy, however I think a re-read of the His Dark Materials set would be needed for me to make any more solid connections, but more details about the compasses and how they work was intriguing. Moreover, I think reading this book just made me pine for the original, as these hold a special place in my heart.

There was one small little section of this book that made me raise an eyebrow and it would be the minior reference to pedophilia, I did not see the neccessity of such a dark inclusion within the book. The story would have been the same without the mention, but the fact it was there threw me off slightly. I'm hoping for no similar references in later books in this new series.

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nadiaherondale's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging tense slow-paced

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

3.75

Although I didn't enjoy this one nearly as much as I did the original trilogy it still is a good book: after all it's written by Philip Pullman and he is a narrative master. I loved the storytelling and the little cameos and the spying subplot, but in the end some parts felt repetitive and I ended up bored.

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whatsnack_'s review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

tifftastic87's review

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adventurous emotional fast-paced

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

4.5

I really enjoyed this book a lot. It was such a quick and good read and it was wonderful to go back into the world of Pullman.

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angelbabe_cj's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

idailf's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.5

Content Warnings

katie_345's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense 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? No

2.25

I really enjoyed the characters and the storyline, however it was too dark for me I especially didn’t like the animal cruelty - it made me feel uncomfortable and a little bit sick reading it.

P.s this book left some stuff unresolved as it’s a first of three, also this book doesn’t really talk about Dust or get into it in nearly as much detail as it does other topics ... the title could be misleading but we might find out more about dust in the follow up novel (not that I’ll read it for fear it will mentally scar me!😂 😳)

“This was all very difficult “- Malcolm - I hear ya Malcolm, me too!

“Then there was the word Dust, with a capital D as if it wasn’t ordinary dust but something special.” - Malcolm

“The weather office, so highly regarded by some of the drinkers at the trout and disdained by others, did what they always did and told their attendants exactly what they could have seen by looking at the sky.”

“It’s a nice life being a baby!” - Malcolm

“Nothing she had ever seen or heard , had pleased her more then this crazy plunge down a waterfall in the total darkness” - Malcolm

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jackie_b's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense fast-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? No

4.5

Good book that was more similar to the feeling of the tv series, his dark materials, rather than the original golden compass books. I would say it moves past the age range of young adult and deals with more adult topics even though the characters are young.

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wolfthorn's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I have to say that it's not the most exciting book to start off with. It's really slow and nothing happens for about half of the book. It definitely got better once the flood appeared, there was more excitement after that point. Just a shame that it took so long to get to it! There were some parts towards the end that didn't make a lot of sense:

the island with the odd lady, and the garden

. I'm not sure if they'd have made more sense if I'd read the full series. I did like

the river god

though, that was nicely done.

There's also some parts which I have found to be rather unsuitable for a children's/YA book. There's two mentions of paedophilia, two different characters have a known attraction to young children, one for girls and one for boys. The main character is an eleven year old boy and there's a discussion about using him as bait in order to blackmail the relevant character! There's also a vague sex scene, although it's more along the lines of 'these two characters are having sex' rather than anything graphic. That all makes for rather uncomfortable reading. However, the attempted rape was very disconcerting. It's a kids book!

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