It's his crowning achievement, and in the manner of crowning achievements, it makes you reappraise is previous work. Nicholas Lake, Garner's editor at HarperCollins, called the new book 'a masterpiece.

And the witch said, 'You come home with me and I'll give you a good dinner.' Now you wouldn't go home with a witch, would you?' Colin stood. 'So the little boy went into the wood, and he met a witch. 'A woman was reading a book to a child on her knee. The publisher also unveiled a short scene from the novel. Otherwise the skies will fall, and there will be only winter, wanderers and moon …' And the Watcher will have to find the Woman. But Colin will have to remember quickly, to find his sister. 'And then, finally, a new force enters his life, a therapist who might be able to unlock what happened to him when he was 12, what happened to his sister. 'Colin can't remember and he remembers too much,' said Fourth Estate. The adult Colin can remember nothing from his life before the age of 13, and afterwards he remembers everything, from every minute of every hour of every day. 'At the same time, and in another time, the Watcher cuts the rock and blows bulls on the stone with his blood, and dances, to keep the sky above the earth and the stars flying.' At night, he is on Alderley Edge, watching', said Garner's publisher. In Boneland, Colin is a professor who spends his days at Jodrell Bank 'using the radio telescope to look for his lost sister in the Pleiades. Why did it take so long for Boneland to gestate? All I can say is that it took as long as it took.' The links to the book-not-written had become subliminal cliffhangers. There are nuggets in the text that hint of unfinished business. The lack of the third book, I discovered, gave the readers of the first two a sense of urgency. 'When I set out at three minutes past four on Tuesday the fourth of September 1956 to discover whether or not I could write, I saw the first piece of work as a trilogy, but I didn't know why that was so, nor what shape it would take,' said Garner today. The author has now completed the trilogy with Boneland, out from Fourth Estate in August, which sees an adult Colin searching for his lost sister. Drawing on local myth and legend, Garner continued the story of Colin and Susan in The Moon of Gomrath, in which the siblings light a fire on Alderley Edge and summon the Wild Hunt.

The weirdstone of brisingamen review