Full of puzzles to think about, puns to groan at and references to children's book titles, this solid, tightly plotted read is a winner for readers and game-players alike

An ode to libraries and literature that is a worthy successor to the original madman puzzle-master himself, Willy Wonka

A marvel

... everything gets very funny

Adventure, magic and the usual dark, dry humour will keep you entertained from start to finish

There are entertaining twists, humorous moments, and just enough romance to leave everyone happy at the end of the book

a must for all Pratchett fans

High-octane adventure accompanies ingenious plotting during Lyra’s extended journey in a canoe down a dangerously flooded Thames

The first instalment of The Book of Dust is an utter joy. It is also generous, frightening, thrilling, clever and ingenious

Is there a richer, more complex conceit in modern fiction than Pullman’s daemons – animal companions that are both a projection of yourself and a guide, both soul and guardian angel?

Full of acute observation. It is also a rich, imagantive, vividly characterised rite-of-passage tale . . . You scoot through its 560 pages like a canoe careering along on floodwaters

Bold and brilliant

Full of Pullman’s trademark imagination, adventure and scientific exploration

La Belle Sauvage is a feast of a book

Pullman’s imagination is so enticing that any new window into it is welcome; and to connect once more with a fictional universe of such great power is a delight . . . I’m certainly eager for the next two parts of this new trilogy; there are, after all, many more worlds to conquer

A thrilling page turner that will fly off the shelves and delight his legion of fans . . . La Belle Sauvage introduces new characters to Pullman’s multiverse but stands equal to his earlier works in its quality of prose, layered world-building and breathtaking mastery of plot

Thrillingly entertaining & beautifully written

Pullman’s style is lively and physically specific, and the descriptions of the flood and its consequences are brilliantly done . . . Pullman is as a story­teller who wants to persuade us to start attending again to the connections that we have lost the ability to see

The Book of Dust feels more earthbound — in the best way — than the earlier trilogy. The cosmic clockwork of “His Dark Materials,” with its multiverses and metaphysics, becomes grounded in this new novel . . . But there is plenty of magic here, too, not just daemons and startling prophecies but witches and spectres, forays into Faerie, and Malcolm’s eerie, migraine-like visions of the aurora borealis. Too few things in our own world are worth a 17-year-wait: The Book of Dust is one of them

Much mythological material is being brewed: a predestined wonderful foundling, a child snatcher, a few treacherously beguiling spectres and perilous fairylands. Pullman’s immense powers of kinaesthetic visualisation keep the story pulsing on an epic scale

Funny, sad and extremely moving . . . most will likely consider it one of the strongest, and certainly one of the most – possibly the most – moving [of the Discworld novels].