I was so looking forward to this book, because the Dark Materials trilogy is among my all-time favorites, but unfortunately I've found La Belle Sauvage a real slog. It took me over two months to get through it, which is unusual for me. Now I'm almost to the end, and it's remarkable how little desire I have to finish it (though I'll probably do so tonight). It's not terribly written by any means, it's just...really, really slow, and bogged down in unnecessary and repetitive plot detours. I lost count of the number of scenes where Malcolm goes to the nunnery to visit baby Lyra, or meets with Hannah, and then finally the plot gets going and they're on the run in a boat, but somehow even that quickly becomes bogged down and repetitive. It feels like the entire book is a drawn-out setup, which I guess it is...and maybe that wouldn't have bothered me if I'd been more invested in the characters, but none of the main characters were all that interesting to me. Except the villain, who barely gets any page-time.
In The Golden Compass I remember being dazzled by the constant introduction of intriguing and original concepts. Every chapter, it seemed, there was a new mystery--what is Dust, what is the alethiometer, where are all these kidnapped children being taken to, what is the nature of these mysterious experiments? Here that's absent. We already know the answers to all the big questions, and there's nothing to really take their place.
I'm astounded to be saying this about a Philip Pullman novel, but I probably won't buy the next one, not unless I hear people saying it's much better. Though a lot of people did seem to enjoy this one, so who knows. Reception's been pretty mixed, overall. But I personally found it to be a huge letdown.