{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "createdAt": "2025-11-21T20:47:00+00:00",
  "path": "/books/la-belle-sauvage",
  "publishedAt": "2025-11-21T20:47:00+00:00",
  "site": "at://did:plc:swxoj3wjlwodcqs5ipmvgnug/site.standard.publication/3mnv7gbn3czno",
  "textContent": "The Book of Dust, vol. 1Second read.All of the pieces are here, and the episodic nature of Pullman's storytelling is here, but the sauce that made the His Dark Materials trilogy so good is missing. Things just sort of happen one after another with nothing to tie them all together.Magic is a lot more present than it was in the earlier books, but it feels cheap, somehow. The meetings with the fairy Diania and the giant in the river come and go with so little significance. There are high stakes but very little tension.The church is also a lot more explicitly sinister; in the earlier books the Magisterium was a pretext to explore the evil impulses of individuals, but in La Belle Sauvage they're just Stormtroopers. Faceless, uniformed, conspiring ambiguously. Mrs. Coulter retains her charisma for the short scene that she's shoehorned into.There’s also a lot more modern technology than I remember, with only a light dusting of steampunk over it: cars, motorboats, etc. I get that it’s still 1986 in this world but there was something kind of Edwardian about His Dark Materials that isn’t present. I keep expecting Malcolm to wander into a room with a television.There’s so much action but nothing really happens. The whole second half of the book especially. There’s a catastrophic flood but somehow everyone just disappears except for a couple of speedboats looking for… something. Probably Malcolm and Alice and Lyra. At one point they drift into Oxford city centre, where they find only a single dead body and some rescuers floating around. And then no one else at all between Oxford and London. I get that it's implied that they somehow wandered into the Backrooms at one point but even when they arrive in London the city seems somehow devoid of life (although, blink and you'll miss it, Battersea Power Station exists in this world!). The flood is a national catastrophe — where did everyone go?He wanted to talk about the garden under the ground, and wonder with her what it meant; he wanted to tell her what he’d seen beyond the fog bank. He wanted to tell her about the witch and the wild dogs, and wonder what they meant. He wanted to talk about the shadow they felt was following them, and agree that it was nothing and laugh about it.I want these things too! If Pullman ever explains them, I totally missed it.I'm complaining a lot, but it's not a bad book. Pullman's good at weaving a bit of poetry into his language, and the idea of daemons is still captivating. Malcolm is a good character, although he probably should get his visual migraines checked out. Like I said, all of the pieces are here! But it's all a bit sauceless.I don’t know why the book is named after the canoe.",
  "title": "La Belle Sauvage",
  "updatedAt": "2025-12-29T22:53:23+00:00"
}