La Belle Sauvage
First edition cover
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| Author | Philip Pullman |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Book of Dust |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher |
David Fickling Books (UK) Alfred A. Knopf (US) |
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Publication date
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19 October 2017 |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 560 pp |
| ISBN | |
| [Fic] 22 | |
| Preceded by | Once Upon a Time in the North |
| Followed by | Northern Lights |
La Belle Sauvage is a fantasy novel by Philip Pullman published in 2017; the first volume in a planned trilogy named The Book of Dust. Taking place 10 years before the start of His Dark Materials the previous trilogy, the story covers the events leading up to Lyra living in Jordan College, Oxford.
The setting is a world dominated by the Magisterium, also commonly called "the Church", an international theocracy which actively suppresses heresy. In this world, humans' souls naturally exist outside of their bodies in the form of sentient "dæmons", in animal form which accompany, aid, and comfort their humans. Children's dæmons can freely and instantaneously change their appearance into that of any real or mythical creature. When puberty is reached, their dæmons settle into one permanent form.
Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead and his dæmon Asta live three miles upriver of Oxford. Malcolm works as a pot-boy in his parents' inn, The Trout, alongside fifteen-year-old Alice, with whom he has a strained relationship. Across the river is the Priory of St. Rosamund, where Malcolm helps the nuns with maintenance and cooking. One day, three men, led by Lord Nugent, the former Lord Chancellor, arrive at the inn and ask Malcolm a series of questions about the priory. Shortly thereafter, an infant named Lyra arrives in the care of the nuns.
Lord Nugent is the head of a secret society known as Oakley Street, which grew out of the intelligence services that used to be at his command and which opposes the hardline religious policies of the Magisterium. In their service is Hannah Relf, an alethiometrist, and her marmoset dæmon Jesper. One day Malcolm oversees a failed attempt at a dead drop, and he finds a message intended for Hannah. By asking Oxford's alethiometer, she is able to find Malcolm and the message, and the two strike up a friendship in which Malcolm assists her intelligence gathering and she provides him with books to read from her own library.
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Wikipedia