His Slightly Less Dark Materials

I loved Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, or at least its first two books, "The Golden Compass" and "The Subtle Knife." The final volume, "The Amber Spyglass," set out to wrap up all the loose ends in the cosmology and philosophy Pullman had created, and in the process, I felt, it lost the sense of mystery that had wrapped me up in the first two books.

Now, Pullman has a new novel in what is supposedly going to be a new trilogy that will serve as prequels to "His Dark Materials" "The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage," is the first volume in this new series, and I liked it a lot.

Lyra, the fateful protagonist of "The Golden Compass," appears in "La Belle Sauvage" as an infant. We also see some familiar characters such as Farder Coram and Lyra's estranged parents, Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel. Mrs. Coulter is glamorous and wicked, as she was in the original series, but the mysterious Lord Asriel seems very different. After all we know about him, it's touching and strange to see Asriel appear here as a caring, if distant, young father.

However, the heroes of "La Belle Sauvage" are new characters: 11-year-old Malcolm Polstead and 16-year-old Alice Parslow rescue baby Lyra from a madman and escape with her on an eerie and sometimes supernatural river journey down the Thames during a massive flood. (Before I read the novel, I thought that the title "La Belle Sauvage" was a somewhat pretentious way to describe Lyra, who we know from "The Golden Compass" becomes a wild and willful young girl, but it turns out that "La Belle Sauvage" is the name of Malcolm's little boat.) There are many allusions at work in the dreamlike imagery of the flood. There are scenes that resemble Greek myths, and others that call upon the beliefs of pre-Christian England, and I kept thinking of the eerie 1955 Robert Mitchum film "Night of the Hunter," which also features two children fleeing down a river, pursued by a mysterious killer.

"His Dark Materials" was marketed as a young adult series, and, though I never felt Pullman was talking down to children, the books largely avoided anything suggesting sex or graphic violence. By contrast, the villain of "La Belle Sauvage" is a sexual predator, and the violence can be somewhat explicit. I saw "La Belle Sauvage" in the young adults section of a bookstore the other day, but it's not Harry Potter. There is some sex and violence and sexual violence, and it's pretty scary at times.

The Prequel Test

Generally, prequels to a popular story have to justify their existence in a way that sequels don't. If we've already read a great story, and then what happened next, why would we want to go back and read about something that happened before the great story? Isn't it sort of necessarily a less-great story?

So, does "La Belle Sauvage" need to exist? Not really. "His Dark Materials" makes sense without it, but I'm not sure "La Belle Sauvage" makes any sense without the original trilogy.

One of my favorite things about "The Golden Compass" was the way Pullman didn't go out of his way to explain some of the peculiarities of Lyra's world -- most prominently, the fact that every human has a daemon, a talking animal who serves a role that is somewhere between the person's companion and his or her soul. He elaborates a bit more in the later books. In "La Belle Sauvage," he hardly mentions it. If you hadn't read "The Golden Compass" you might have no idea what he's talking about.

All that said, "La Belle Sauvage" reminded me what I loved about "The Golden Compass" and "The Subtle Knife," while, in an odd way redeeming what I didn't like about "The Amber Spyglass." In particular its approach to ancient myths even redeemed some parts of "The Amber Spyglass" for me.

"His Dark Materials" is controversial in some circles for its negative portrayal of (a fictional analog of) the Catholic Church. However, it is not atheistic. There are prophecies, witches, angels, an afterlife and I think there was even a brief appearance by God himself at one point. For me, the cosmology got pretty confusing in "The Amber Spyglass." In "La Belle Sauvage," when we get a glimpse of a faerie or an ancient river spirit, we get a good sense of how they fit into Malcolm's universe. They aren't exactly supernatural -- an historic flood reveals them as it changes the landscape -- they are a part of nature we don't yet fully understand.

What will "The Book of Dust Part Two" be like? I have no idea. I don't know what else there is to say in this story. But "La Belle Sauvage" convinced me that Pullman knows what he's doing.