One of the upsides of a five-day weekend is the opportunity to dive deeply into a good book and this very long weekend I took an armchair journey to Oxford.
Not the Oxford of the BBC’s Inspector Morse, but Lyra’s Oxford, the once created by Philip Pullman. Did you know he has a new series, set in the Oxford before the His Dark Materials series. I went on my journey with an infant Lyra and learned something of her backstory in La Belle Sauvage the first book in his new series, The Book of Dust.
Here is the US cover
And here is the UK cover.
Publisher’s Summary: Malcolm Polstead is the kind of boy who notices everything but is not much noticed himself. And so perhaps it was inevitable that he would become a spy….
Malcolm’s parents run an inn called the Trout, on the banks of the river Thames, and all of Oxford passes through its doors. Malcolm and his daemon, Asta, routinely overhear news and gossip, and the occasional scandal, but during a winter of unceasing rain, Malcolm catches wind of something new: intrigue.
He finds a secret message inquiring about a dangerous substance called Dust—and the spy it was intended for finds him.
When she asks Malcolm to keep his eyes open, he sees suspicious characters everywhere: the explorer Lord Asriel, clearly on the run; enforcement agents from the Magisterium; a gyptian named Coram with warnings just for Malcolm; and a beautiful woman with an evil monkey for a daemon. All are asking about the same thing: a girl—just a baby—named Lyra.
Lyra is the kind of person who draws people in like magnets. And Malcolm will brave any danger, and make shocking sacrifices, to bring her safely through the storm.
I loved Malcolm and wished he was a student in my class. I was drawn into the story immediately and I am now thinking, while I wait for the next book, I might reread the His Dark Materials series.
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