Patricia Pushlady - TRF

The long-awaited and highly anticipated conclusion to Philip Pullman's bestselling The Book of Dust sequence . . .'Lyra: what will you do when you find this place in the desert, the opening to the world of the roses?''Defend it,' Lyra said. 'Die defending it.'When readers left Lyra in The Secret Commonwealth she was alone, in the ruins of a deserted city. Pantalaimon had run from her - part of himself - in search of her imagination, which he believed she had lost. Lyra travelled across the world from her Oxford home in search of her dæmon. And Malcolm, loyal Malcolm, too journeyed far from home, towards the Silk Roads in search of Lyra . . .In The Rose Field, their quests converge in the most dangerous, breathtaking and world-changing ways. They must take help from spies and thieves, gryphons and witches, old friends and new, learning all the while the depth and surprising truths of the alethiometer. All around them, the world is aflame - made terrifying by fear, power and greed.As they move East, towards the red building that will reunite them and give them answers - on Dust, on the special roses, on imagination - so too does the Magisterium, at war against all that Lyra holds dear.Marking thirty years since the world was first introduced to Pullman's remarkable heroine Lyra Belacqua in Northern Lights, The Rose Field is the culmination of the cultural phenomenon of The Book of Dust and His Dark Materials.'Ablaze with light and life . . . To read Pullman is to experience the world refreshed, aglow, in technicolour' - Independent