La Belle Sauvage

This prequel to the author's His Dark Materials trilogy is less of a wide-ranging adventure than that story. A few characters recur here, with the infant version of main character Lyra at the center and younger versions of Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter seeming practically identical in character to they way they were portrayed earlier. The first part has a bit of light intrigue and conflict in the setting of fantasy Oxford, the last half takes place on the floodwaters inundating the Midlands and southern England depicting more peril and scary situations for young readers. None of the exotic settings in this version of a parallel Earth show up making it feel like a more miniaturized story. There are a few new characters given fairly detailed traits in the author's style along with one new villain with sinister motives looming over the young heroes Lyra and her two young adolescent caretakers. This made the book feel in a young adult or maybe middle grades book category rather than the more adult style of the earlier trilogy In the series title "Dust" refers to the main supernatural innovation distinguishing the story universe from our own, but none of the players except for the antagonist have much understanding of the concept.

The action of the story does not really fill in a vital part of Lyra's character arc that had thought was missing. I take it that the sequels to this volume jump forward past the timeline of His Dark Materials to fill in later plot points, which I am not eager to learn. The audiobook presentation was pleasant, but ultimately not of the same caliber as what went before, in my opinion.