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How long does it take to read La Belle Sauvage?

Philip Pullman

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman takes about 8 hours 48 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

Book 1 of The Book of Dust

Next: The Secret Commonwealth

About 8 hours 48 minutes

A week or two of reading

First published 2017. 480 pages, about 132,000 words. Written for children.

18 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 14 hours 40 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 8 hours 48 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 5 hours 30 minutes

The page count is the median across 18 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Malcolm Polstead is the kind of boy who notices everything but is not much noticed himself. And so perhaps it was inevitable that he would become a spy.... Malcolm's father runs an inn called the Trout, on the banks of the river Thames, and all of Oxford passes through its doors. Malcolm and his daemon, Asta, routinely overhear news and gossip, and the occasional scandal, but during a winter of unceasing rain, Malcolm catches wind of something new: intrigue. He finds a secret message inquiring about a dangerous substance called Dust--and the spy it was intended for finds him. When she asks Malcolm to keep his eyes open, Malcom sees suspicious characters everywhere: the explorer Lord Asriel, clearly on the run; enforcement agents from the Magisterium; a gyptian named Coram with warnings just for Malcolm; and a beautiful woman with an evil monkey for a daemon. All are asking about the same thing: a girl--just a baby--named Lyra. Lyra is the kind of person who draws people in like magnets. And Malcolm will brave any danger, and make shocking sacrifices, to bring her safely through the storm. This description comes from the publisher. La Belle Sauvage is the first volume of the Book of Dust trilogy, which takes place in the world of the His Dark Materials trilogy, the first of which is The Golden Compass or Northern Lights.

Subjects: Fantasy, Lyra Belacqua (Fictitious character), Fiction, Children's fiction, Adventure and adventurers, fiction, Fantasy fiction

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