The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman

I love the His Dark Materials books. Love them. I got into the series near the end of the very long wait for The Amber Spyglass, while working at a bookstore where we had to field sad questions for years about where the last book was. (I feel you, bookstore workers dealing with upset George R.R. Martin fans. I've been there.)  I was just head over heels in love with all of them, and I still am. Hmm, maybe it's time for a reread....

And then I went on to read Pullman's Sally Lockhart books, and I loved those not quite but almost as much. They were so good and deep, surprisingly incisive in looking at Victorian adventure and history, and at least one of them made it hard to breathe with how terrible the core dilemma was.

So to say that I was excited to get a new Philip Pullman book would be an understatement. Guilty admission: I never did read Lyra's Oxford, even though we own it. I think at that point the trilogy was so perfect in my mind, I didn't need to add to it. I might have felt the same way about this book, except that it was nominated for a Young Adult WSFS Award at the Hugos this year, and so of course I then had an extra reason to pick it up.

After having read it, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, and yet was a bit disappointed that it wasn't as deep a story as I've come to expect from Pullman. None of that made this less fun to read, but I wanted more, those deeper connections to ideas, to history, to conflict. This was much more surface than I thought I'd find.

Lyra is not really a character, because she's a baby. If you've read the main trilogy, there are of course hints of who she will become, but she's pre-verbal, and while pretty damn adorable, not her own person yet. Instead, we follow Malcolm, a boy who lives across the river from the abbey where Lyra is first sheltered after the scandal with her parents and her mother's husband. His parents own a local pub, and Malcolm goes to school and works there, while also helping out on occasion with the nuns.

He falls protectively in love with the baby as soon as Lyra is bought there, and becomes immediately aware that there are those around who wish her ill, and might even stoop to kidnapping a wee one to further their own agendas - including a new wing of the church that surveils children and removes them from their parents, encouraging children to bring charges of heresy against everyone around them.

Malcolm also becomes aware by chance of a secret service dedicated to the government and limiting the Church's power, and is used as a source by an agent of theirs, a young woman who studies with the nearest alethiometer, in between doing readings for the agency she works for.

Along with the young woman who works for his parents, Alice, Malcolm tries to negotiate a suddenly risky world. He and Alice do not get along, but join in caring for Lyra when a flood threatens, and a man with a hyena for a daemon follows them, wanting things that no one knows, but are horrible to contemplate. Doing so sends Malcolm, Alice, and Lyra on an Odyssey of their own, including a trip to the land of the dead.

The gyptians make a minor appearance, as do the witches, and a new delve into the world of the fae. It's an entertaining journey, and I really quite enjoyed it. But still, it felt like Pullman has done better. It's very good, but not his personal best.