#91 in Young adult
La Belle Sauvage
- 480
- Pages
- about 9 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“La Belle Sauvage” is at its best in its slow, tender and quietly dark first half. The early chapters, with their convent, Malcolm’s daily round and the tension gathering around an infant Lyra, show Pullman’s world at close, domestic range. Some readers feel the second half does less with that groundwork than it promises, and those who come straight from “His Dark Materials” may expect something grander.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
La Belle Sauvage is a fantasy novel by Philip Pullman published in 2017. It is the first volume of a trilogy titled The Book of Dust and is set twelve years before Pullman's His Dark Materials. It presents events prior to the arrival of the six-month-old Lyra Belacqua at Jordan College, Oxford.
Reading order · The Book of Dust
Full order & progress →- La Belle SauvageThis book
8.18.1 / 10 - The Secret Commonwealth
7.97.9 / 10 - The Rose Field
7.67.6 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.2 across 461 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 76% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Young adult average of 7.8. That is how 8.1 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.3 | 24 | 5% |
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 437 | 95% |
Frequently asked
What age is La Belle Sauvage for?
La Belle Sauvage sits on the Young adult shelf in the sources we use, which by convention means roughly ages 13 and up. This is a guide from the book’s category, not a publisher’s age rating. It has 480 pages — shorter than 61% of the ranked books in Young adult.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Young adult — and a score of 8.1, the closest to this book.
