野美人号 (2017)

《野美人号》（英语：La Belle Sauvage）是菲利普·普尔曼系列奇幻小说《尘之书三部曲》的第一部，于2017年10月出版。故事背景发生于《黄金罗盘》的十二年前。

情节简介

11岁男孩麦尔肯在家里开设的“鳟鱼”旅店（离牛津市有三英里远）帮忙，有时也帮圣罗莎蒙修道院的修女打杂。他被卷入当时动荡不安的时局，为了保护修道院新来的女婴莱拉，麦尔肯与女孩艾莉丝带着莱拉在洪水来临时乘着独木舟“野美人号”躲过一劫，同时还要躲避敌人的追击。历经千辛万苦后，麦尔肯和艾莉丝在伦敦和莱拉的生父艾塞列公爵会合，艾塞列公爵将莱拉交给了牛津乔丹学院庇护。

人物

麦尔肯·波斯戴，小说主角，时年11岁的男孩，拥有“野美人号”独木舟艾莉丝·帕斯诺，时年15岁的女孩，在“鳟鱼”工作。她也是罗杰·帕斯洛（未来莱拉在乔丹学院的好友）的堂姐莱拉，约六个月大的婴儿，为艾塞列公爵和考尔特夫人的私生女汉娜·瑞芙，圣苏菲亚学院的学者，也是与教会势力斗争的秘密组织“奥克立街”的一员

杰若德·波奈维尔

克朗·范·特塞尔，吉普赛人

评价

该作出版后获得一些媒体的正面评价。《华盛顿邮报》书评称：“在我们世界中，很少书能让我们愿意等十七年，但《尘之书》绝对是其中之一”；《卫报》书评认为该书“值得期待”。

改编作品

《野美人号》将被改编为舞台剧，由尼可拉斯·海特纳导演。

La Belle Sauvage is a fantasy novel by Philip Pullman published in 2017. It is the first volume of a trilogy titled The Book of Dust and is set twelve years before Pullman's His Dark Materials. It presents events prior to the arrival of the six-month-old Lyra Belacqua at Jordan College, Oxford.

Setting

The setting is a world dominated by the Magisterium (commonly called "the Church"), an international theocracy which actively suppresses heresy. In this world, humans' souls naturally exist outside of their bodies in the form of sentient "dæmons" in animal form which accompany, aid, and comfort their humans. An important plot device is the alethiometer, or symbol reader, of which just six are known to exist in this world. By setting three of the alethiometer's hands to point to symbols around a dial a skilled practitioner can pose questions, which are answered by the movement around the dial of a fourth hand.

Plot

Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead and his dæmon Asta live three miles from Oxford. Malcolm works alongside fifteen-year-old Alice in his parents' inn, The Trout, close to the Priory of St. Rosamund where Malcolm helps the nuns with maintenance and cooking. One day, three men, led by the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Nugent, arrive at the inn and question Malcolm about the priory. Shortly afterwards, an infant aged around six months named Lyra arrives in the care of the nuns.

Walking near the river, Malcolm sees a failed attempt at a dead drop and finds a secret message. The intended recipient is Hannah, an Oxford academic specialising in the alethiometer who is secretly helping an organisation known as "Oakley Street" in its fight against the theocratic extremism of the Magisterium. Using the alethiometer Hannah finds Malcolm and retrieves her message. The two strike up a friendship in which Malcolm assists her intelligence-gathering and she provides him with books to read from her own library.

The Magisterium's influence grows. At Malcolm's school, students are encouraged to join the League of St. Alexander, and to report anybody—including teachers—who contradict the Magisterium's religious views. Coram van Texel, also working for Oakley Street, is investigating the activities of Marisa Coulter in Sweden. He discovers that she is looking into the Rusakov field and has asked an alethiometrist to find her daughter Lyra's location. Coram is followed by a man with a malevolent hyena dæmon and fights him, badly wounding the dæmon's front leg. Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, visits the inn and Malcolm takes him to visit Lyra. To escape his pursuers Asriel borrows Malcolm's canoe, La Belle Sauvage. As a token of thanks, he returns it significantly improved. Coram warns Malcolm of an impending flood, but Malcolm is unable to convince people to act. A man named Gerard Bonneville arrives at the inn, accompanied by a three-legged hyena dæmon, and Malcolm sees him snooping around the priory.

Heavy rain starts to fall. Alice warns Malcolm about Bonneville, whom they see trying to take the baby Lyra. As the flood arrives, Malcolm and Alice rescue the child and escape down river in La Belle Sauvage. They intend to stop at Jordan College to seek academic sanctuary for Lyra, but are prevented by the ferocity of the floodwaters. Instead, they head to London, where Lord Asriel lives, pursued by Bonneville; both Oakley Street and the Magisterium are also searching for them. They narrowly escape from Bonneville when Malcolm stabs him in the thigh and Alice shoots his dæmon, shattering her other leg. They take his heavy backpack. Shortly afterwards, they meet George Boatwright, a former patron of The Trout who has been in hiding with a small community since offending the Church. Their arrival is reported to The League of St. Alexander, and Lyra is captured and taken to an orphanage run by a convent. Malcolm enters through the scullery and rescues her.