Publisher's Weekly Review
Narrator Sheen's sonorous, dramatic reading immediately pulls listeners back into the mysterious world of Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Set 10 years before The Golden Compass begins, this series launch focuses on 11-year-old Malcolm Polstead, the son of the innkeepers at the Trout Tavern and Inn. Malcolm is a curious, insightful, kind-hearted boy who helps out at the Priory of St. Rosamond, where the sisters are caring for Lyra, a newly arrived infant who is far from home and has captured the attention of several suspicious characters. Alongside the disagreeable Alice, a lanky 15-year-old who also works at the tavern and the priory, and their magical animal companions,Malcolm embarks on a turbulent, terrifying race down the raging Thames in his beloved canoe, La Belle Sauvage, to deliver Lyra to her parents. Talented Welsh actor Sheen masterfully conveys every bit of the drama, suspense, and emotion of Malcolm's adventure, right to the very end as Malcolm and Alice arrive at their destination "filthy, exhausted, bloody." The audio edition will leave listeners counting the days until the next installment. Ages 14-up. A Knopf hardcover. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Pullman's return to the realms of His Dark Materials moves the timeline back to Lyra's infancy with a tale of young people struggling against outsized forces of both nature and evil.It's a story in two parts, as the author devotes nearly the entire first half to a slow buildup of tension around a certain baby recently consigned to the indulgent sisters of a nearby priory, to setting the cast in place, and to the founding of a network of student informants dubbed the "League of St. Alexander" (after an early convert who consigned his pagan parents to the flamesit's clear the author continues to wield his anything-but-subtle knife on organized Christianity). Then, impelled by a devastating flood and the attentions of a sinister stranger with a horribly wounded, abused hyena for a daemon, 11-year-old Malcolm Pollstead undertakes a desperate rescue. He bundles the laughing infant into his canoe (named La Belle Sauvage) along with teenage acquaintance Alice Parslow. The terrifying hazards they encounter are natural, unnatural, and even supernatural. The rescue becomes a long flightpart idyll, part nightmarethat ultimately leaves the burbling babe and her daemon, Pantalaimon, ensconced in Jordan College. First, though, come encounters with Lyra's larger-than-life parents and numerous other characters met in other books in the series, no fewer than three of the world's six alethiometers, the odd fairy or river god, and a sick, twisted villain whose relentless pursuit leads to a rape in the tale's most hideously violent episode. Save for a few "gyptians," the human cast is white. Illustrations not seen.Magisterial storytelling will sweep readers along; the cast is as vividly drawn as ever; and big themes running beneath the surface invite profound responses and reflection. (Fantasy. 13-adult) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* And so it begins again. Enthusiasts of Pullman's His Dark Materials series, which began with The Golden Compass (1996), have been hoping for a return to Lyra Belacqua's world, a parallel Oxford where people's souls are entwined with their own daemons, animal familiars, a place where the future can be discerned with alethiometers and dust has consciousness. Pullman has said this book is not a prequel but rather stands at the side of the trilogy. It is set more than a decade before The Golden Compass. Lyra is a baby being cared for by nuns, her disturbing birth story set against the ongoing estrangement of her parents, Mrs. Coulter and Lord Astriel. Eleven-year-old Malcolm, who works at his parents' inn, finds himself taking on the role of Lyra's protector as malevolent forces seek to control her. Pullman demonstrates that his talent for world building hasn't diminished, nor has his ability to draw young characters here, Malcolm, who is layered enough to carry an adventure through multiple dimensions. The book is divided into two, before and after an unprecedented flood that forces Malcolm and surly teenager Alice to take Lyra on a perilous journey to safety. The boat trip, which goes on perhaps too long, nevertheless is a swirling mix of fear, hope, and intrigue and written in language that's both elegant and earthy. The next title in the Book of Dust trilogy is reportedly set in Lyra's future, not past, and all fans can do is wait impatiently.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ARTEMIS By Andy Weir. Read by Rosario Dawson. (Audible Studios.) Dawson's nuanced voice takes us to the moon in the second novel by the author of "The Martian." UNCOMMON TYPE By Tom Hanks. Read by the author. (Penguin Random House Audio.) The Oscar-winning actor brings to life his debut collection of 17 loosely linked short stories. THE PURLOINING OF PRINCE OLEOMARGARINE By Mark Twain, with Philip Stead and Erin Stead. Read by Keegan-Michael Key, Philip Stead et al. (Listening Library.) The comedian and producer (and one half of the dynamic Key and Peele) narrates a previously unfinished and unpublished manuscript by Mark Twain, newly completed by the husband-and-wife children's book team behind the Caldecott Medal-winning "A Sick Day for Amos McGee." THE BOOK OF DUST By Philip Pullman. Read by Michael Sheen. (Listening Library.) The Welsh actor transports us into the fantastical parallel universe of Pullman's latest Y.A. trilogy, in which everyone has an inner daemon. PROMISE ME, DAD By Joe Biden. Read by the author. (Audible Studios.) The former vice president delivers his candid, heartfelt and inspiring memoir of losing his son Beau to cancer while facing political challenges foreign and domestic. & Noteworthy "O.K., I'm a nerd. I loved THE ODYSSEY from my first encounter in ninth-grade English class (the Robert Fitzgerald translation). The great questions of survival, cunning, treachery, exploitation and parental and marital love have never failed to transfix me, in whatever translation (Richmond Lattimore, Robert Fagles). But Emily Wilson's, the first into English by a woman, is a revelation. Never have I been so aware at once of the beauty of the poetry, the physicality of Homer's world and the moral ambiguity of those who inhabit it. Don't miss reading her enlightening translator's note, which explains how seriously she took up the challenge posed a few lines into the first book: 'tell the old story for our modern times./Find the beginning.' She wrestled with contemporary questions of feminism and colonialism without imposing them on the values of Homeric Greece. Her decisions to discard flowery conventions, and to limit herself to the number of the lines in the original poem, produce a version both fleet and vivid. Read for all this, but mostly to savor lines like these: 'he plunged into the sea and swooped between/the waves, just like a seagull catching fish,/wetting its whirring wings in tireless brine.'" -SUSAN CHIRA, SENIOR EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT FOR GENDER, ON WHAT SHE'S READING.