Lucas Stoffel

The Book of Dust (La Belle Sauvage) is a prequel. Lyra is a baby, placed in the care of the nuns at Godstow Priory. Malcolm Polstead is eleven, the son of innkeepers, curious and brave and utterly ordinary in the way that Pullman's best characters are ordinary — which is to say, not at all. Malcolm's daemon Asta hasn't settled yet. He works at the inn, spies on the scholars who drink there, and becomes increasingly aware that the Magisterium's Consistorial Court of Discipline

Let me just say it: I was nervous about this one. Prequels to beloved series have a lousy track record, and even The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes had its skeptics. But Suzanne Collins walking back into the Hunger Games arena to give us Haymitch Abernathy's story? That's either going to be brilliant or it's going to break something sacred. It's brilliant. It might also break you, but that's a different problem. Sunrise on the Reaping is set during the fiftieth Hunger Game