Sword and Sorcery: The Year in High Fantasy

The Dark is Rising
When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.

StarDust
One fateful night, Tristran Thorn promises the most beautiful girl in the rural, English village of Wall, Victoria Forester, that he will retrieve a fallen star for her from beyond the wall that borders their village and separates it from the Faerie realm. Tristran bravely sets out to fetch the fallen star and therefore win the hand of his love, along the way encountering witches, faeries, and unimaginable creatures.

The Golden Compass

In The Golden Compass, the heroine, Lyra Belacqua, a young girl brought up in the cloistered world of Jordan College, Oxford, and her dæmon Pantalaimon learn of the existence of Dust, a strange elementary particle believed by the Church to be evidence for Original Sin. Dust appears to be less attracted to the innocence of children, and this gives rise to grisly experiments being carried out by Church-controlled scientists on kidnapped children in the icy wastelands of the distant North. Lyra and her dæmon journey to save their best friend Roger Parslow and other kidnapped children from this peril, with the aid of the Panserbjørne (armoured bear) Iorek Byrnison, John Faa and Farder Coram, leaders of the Gyptians, the aeronaut Lee Scoresby, and the witch Serafina Pekkala.