A completely beguiling novel. always giving the reader a sense of being there. Very engaging

Wholly delightful, intelligent, funny and unexpected. A remarkable book, offering sheer delight

A simple story, seductively told, it touches and lifts up the beauty of human experience far beyond the mountains of Western China in which the story is set

Highly original and sweetly charming

If you read only one novel, choose this one: it's worth a hundred

An enchanting tale from a pernicious period in Chinese history. Sijie has written a jewel of world literature

If you don't read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, then I'm wasting my time.

There's no denying its emotional heft

Pullman is confronting readers with the horrors of our own world reflected back at us. In The Secret Commonwealth he creates a fearful symmetry

Pullman has created a fantasy world, made yet more satisfying in this new volume. This is a book for getting older with

REVIEWS FOR LA BELLE SAUVAGE: THE BOOK OF DUST VOLUME ONE:

Fans of His Dark Materials will find themselves joyfully immersed in a familiar world . . . meanwhile, awaiting first-time readers is all the pleasure of commencing their own journey into this most captivating of universes at the very beginning of Lyra's story

No one else writes like Pullman . . . entirely worth the 17-year wait

A rich, imaginative, vividly characterised rite-of-passage tale

High-octane adventure accompanies ingenious plotting