La Belle Savage

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is a classic - three novels that explore faith, cruelty, desire, and the very nature of existence itself. Children's literature? In name only. These are complex, challenging, yet completely readable books that don't talk down to their audience and consequently are loved by children and adults alike. In Lyra Belacqua, Pullman created one of the great heroines of literature - brave, resourceful and intelligent. With The Book of Dust, of which La Belle Sauvage is the first volume, he revisits that character at the very start of her life.

This is a prequel centred around the life and death struggle to protect the infant Lyra from the clutches of her mother and the strict religious order that holds sway over this alternative universe England. Set over a decade before the events of His Dark Materials, we find Lyra placed in the care of an order of nuns not far from Oxford. Over the river from the nunnery lives young Malcolm Polstead, who's family run an inn, The Trout. Malcolm becomes fiercely protective of Lyra and finds any excuse to visit the nuns, offering his help in any capacity he can.

But dark forces are at work in the land. The all-seeing eye of the church pits child against adult and the safety of Lyra is called into question. And then comes a flood of biblical proportions and Malcolm finds himself rescuing Lyra and Alice (who works at the Trout as well as helping the nuns), a girl slightly older than he, in his canoe - the La Belle Sauvage of the title.

Now the book takes on a deeply allegorical turn as the two children and the infant Lyra are cast adrift on the floodwaters, pursued by the forces of darkness, embodied by the half-mad scientist Bonneville and his appalling Hyena daemon (for those unfamiliar with this conceit, one's daemon is a part of you in the form of an animal, a kind of conscience made real). They drift across a world of water and encounter elemental, magical forces as they desperately try to get Lyra to her father in London - the explorer Lord Asriel. It is by no means an easy journey.

This is a wonderful book, certainly the equal of any in the previous trilogy. It's a real page turner, as Pullman keeps the action moving at a brisk pace. Our young hero and heroine are very real characters, whose overriding task is to protect their infant charge. They're scared, exhausted and traumatised by the end, exactly as anyone would be in that situation.

Pullman is a great storyteller and, as before, never dumbs down for his audience. If you loved His Dark Materials, you'll love this. The next book will be set ten years after HDM, so we'll get to meet an adult Lyra. I'll be very interested to see where we go next.

Recommended.