La Belle Sauvage
I'll admit that I came to this one with my hackles raised. My feelings toward the original trilogy are strong and complicated, and they get more complicated the more I think about them. In all honestly I hadn't been planning to read it at all. But then I got it as a Christmas present and I can't just not read a book once it's sitting on my shelf. Plus I like The Golden Compass enough to give this one a chance, since it didn't cost me anything. The truth is that I genuinely liked the beginning of the book. Malcolm is a bright, observant boy who works in a tavern. He gets recruited as a spy inevitably and almost without being aware of it. But he sees a lot and he's smart enough to put things together and subtle enough to get more information. The result is a slow story in a deeply familiar world, where information is slowly parceled out and pieced together. I liked the puzzle of it all. It also seemed like Pullman was addressing one of the bigger weaknesses o...