The second installment of the sequel trilogy to His Dark Materials seems to be quite controversial. And I agree. So let's just dive in. Spoilers ahead and trigger warning for rape/pedophilia mentions.
Unlike volume one of The Book of Dust, this one takes place seven years after the events of His Dark Materials. Lyra is now twenty and has grown apart from her daemon, Pantalaimon, which leads to him eventually leaving her to her own devices. She ends up going on a hunt for him, while also being entangled in a murder mystery and some other sketchy business to do with rose oil. Working with her, albeit not alongside her, is Malcolm Polstead, now a scholar.
So this is just kind of what I wanted when I read La Belle Sauvage. A continuation of Lyra's story. But it just didn't end up giving me what I wanted at all.
I get that the story takes place when Lyra is older and thus it's bound to be more mature, but by god, it did not to be handled in such a way. The constant philosophical discussions aside, there's another pointless and graphic rape-attempt scene, Malcolm is revealed to have been in love with Lyra for some time now (even back when she was a teen and thus he an adult) and it just doesn't feel like it has the magic the old Pullman books had. I already felt like La Belle Sauvage lacked this a bit, but The Secret Commonwealth just threw all the magic and love I felt for Lyra's world out the window.
And of course there's the immense disconnect and even hatred between Lyra and Pan. Sorry, but after reading an entire trilogy about them overcoming all the odds and loving and finding one another not matter what in His Dark Materials, I did not want to see these two constantly argue and one eventually abandoning the other. I get that the whole "Lyra separating from Pan"-ordeal from The Subtle Knife will leave some kind of lasting impact on their relationship, but these two just felt like an outright different couple of characters. Lyra has lost all her imagination, no longer heeds any of Pan's advice and has become dull, whereas Pan has become sharp and argues with her a lot. These two just do not feel like the characters I grew to love in the first trilogy.
There also seems to be very little plot. We know that it's characters exploring various aspects (separating daemons, the whole church ordeal with the Patriarch dying, Bonneville chasing after Lyra, the mysterious "daemon city", the rose oil business), but there seems to so far not be a real grander scheme connecting everything. As if this is pretty much just setup for book three. I don't know, I felt like the His Dark Materials trilogy had some really good writing going on with magical worlds and good plots for each installment, but this one just kind of like we were meandering around a few different subjects that don't really connect all that much.
So, yeah, unfortunately I'm no fan of this one. I liked La Belle Sauvage a lot more, but it was brought down by the rape scene. This one I didn't even like that much if you didn't count the needlessly dark concepts against it.
Rating: 2.5/5
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