Minority Report on “La Belle Sauvage”

Philip Pullman’s new prequel to “His Dark Materials”: niggling complaints & miscellaneous observations

“La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One” (Book of Dust Series), by Philip Pullman (Penguin Random House, 2017)

I have said (often in print and ad nauseam to my friends) that Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials–The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass–is the finest thing I’ve read in my lifetime and right up there with The Great Gatsby and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Like many others, then, I spent years looking forward to the arrival of his prequel to that series, La Belle Sauvage. Now that the book is available (and I consumed it in a pretty much non-stop fashion), I confess I am mildly disappointed. But such is my estimation of Pullman’s genius, I am nowhere ready to give up on its author.

Mine is a minority view. Many folks I respect have given the book their ringing endorsements. While more guarded, the New York Times also praised the book. All of which makes my own minor reservations about the book seem like the grumblings of cranky old man. Nonetheless …

1. Longueurs. La Belle Sauvage is the first book in a trilogy called The Book of Dust that is meant to be a prequel to the trilogy His Dark Materials. We are being set up, in other words, for the introduction of the character Lyra and the subject of Dust in the later series. But…