SPOILERS SPOILERS sign in here if you have FINISHED La Belle Sauvage

I understood it as a form of self-harm.

Self hatred ...

Can anyone explain to me why Bonneville was beating his daemon outside the priory that time?

I reread all but the last 2 chapters of Northern Lights the other week and I don't remember it. Although I wasn't looking for it.

I feel like there's still a book between this one and NL. Maybe it'll be covered in the next two even though they are set later.

Rafa - no I don't think so. I have a hazy memory of someone in Northern Lights - from the party? - and I'm going to start re-reading. I'll update if I find anything!

I'm glad others felt the same as me, I was beginning to think I'd just missed loads of it out and should read it again!

Agree about the pre-flood chapters being better. Was at the league of St Alexander stuff and loved Alice, but was a bit meh about the fairy Island but and the underground garden.

Did we ever find out who it was that they were using Malcolm to draw out. It got mentioned after the dinner party but I don't think it got mentioned again. Or I read part 2 too quickly and missed it.

I don't know ... It lacked the huge, swooping majesty of HDM. And was just so episodic. (I wasn't keen on Voyage of the Dawn Treader either.) Unlike the reviews I've seen I preferred the pre-flood chapters. The detail was a nice underpinning for an evolving story. I had trouble believing in the parade of characters they meet on the river and didn't feel PP fully committed to any of them.

But the daemons were stupendous, the pseudo Hitler-youth terrifying (how prescient), and Alice. Oh my! Now I want to read HDM all over again. For about the seventh time.

Loved the fairy bits reminded me so much of reading my granny's very precious copy of the blue fairy book and Arthur Rackams illustrated book "East of the Sun, West of the moon". Which the 3 guesses thing worked in real life!

DC1 "Can I have a new phone?" Me "Yes if you can guess what item of food is hidden in my bag"

I loved it. The second part reminded me of Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, which is hardly surprising since they both take inspiration from Spenser.

I really enjoyed the focus on politics and personal freedom, through the eyes of Malcolm and Alice.

I enjoyed it and read it in a couple of days,like a pp, but I also didn't really get that random fairy sequence of whatever it was, and also noticed a few little changes - I'm sure China was Cathay in HDM and Latin was Roman, but in this one he just gave them our universe names.

I did really enjoy Alice's response to getting pinched on the bottom in the bar.

Re: Mrs Coulter’s hair, apparently PP regretted giving her dark hair in HDM and wished he’d given her blonde. So maybe this was his way of correcting it?

I loved trying to make the links to HDM too. Dr Hannah is Dame Hannah, headmistress of Lyra’s school. And the Parslow reference too. I hope Malcolm comes back in the next instalment. The next one is supposed to be 10 years after the amber spyglass, so Lyra will be 21-22, meaning Malcolm will be 32-33. I wonder if it’s being set up for them to fall in love?

I really enjoyed it and read it in two nights... I just love his writing so in some ways the overall plot is less of a concern to me. I geeked out and checked some character references afterwards: Alice is roger parslow's cousin, and Lyra writes to a Dr Polstead (Malcolm) in Lyra's Oxford apparently (I didn't even know about that short story). The next two in the trilogy are set 10 years after the end of HDM, so I'm guessing we won't see Malcolm or Alice again which I think is a shame as I want to know what happened to Malcolm especially.

I live in east anglia so I liked the references to eastern anglians and how they're not trusted for their mystical gyptian ways

HDM is going to be dramatised by the BBC apparently. Soon I think and over something like 40 episodes. I do think that might work better than the film (although personally I quite liked the Golden Compass)

The hair probably isn't but it felt weird. Like it's making a point that will need to be rectified later.

Roger is the son of one of the families in the cave. I can't remember the guys name - he's mentioned as an aside when they're introducing people. He's the son of a Jordan roofer and Ma thingies cousin.

I'm sure you're right about introducing new characters etc, and also about the weariness of the journey. But I can't help but compare it to Northern Lights with the journey in the North.

I'll probably read the full trilogy when it's out but I just wasn't that impressed. It felt like it ran out of steam.

swallows and amazons mixed with TH White mixed with Andrew Lang what's not to like!

Also - the bit where Malcolm meets Mrs Coulter and it makes a big point of saying her GOLDEN hair. Wtf she had dark hair in HDM and that was part of the reason people didn't like Nicole Kidman as her in the film!

(I can't sleep as you can tell!)

Liked the first half. Second half was just rubbish. Water, more water - bit of peril - change the baby - Malcolm is tired. Also the weird bit where it went a bit woo I didn't like at all. It served no purpose and just jarred with everything I remember about the world.

Really so disappointed. The best bits were meeting those minor characters we'd seen in HDM and fleshing them out a bit. Also the hyena guy was scary.

Overall I gave it a 2/5 on good reads.