His Dark Materials

results. Instead of expanding and adding to the universe Lucas had first conceived, these lacklustre new films managed to remove the sheen from the originals.

The Star Wars prequels have their supporters, but most fans admit they don’t live up to the original trilogy, and Star Wars might have been a purer and better piece of work as a whole if they’d never been made.

Then there was Harry Potter. JK Rowling’s original seven books are globally loved by a generation of readers. The series was carefully planned by Rowling to exist as a piece, and when she published the final book, Rowling said the story was finished and she didn’t expect she would return to that world.

And yet, in the past two years, she has returned to them in grand style. As well as the five film prequels, beginning with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, we have seen a stage play co-written and developed by Rowling as a sequel to the stories, focusing on the adventures of the main characters’ children and revisiting events in the original books. Fans have, once again, expressed disappointment.

Harry Potter and The Cursed Child has great things about it and is unmistakably part of the world, but it just isn’t the same as Rowling’s first series. It wasn’t conceived to be part of the story from the beginning, and something about it interferes with our memories of the original.

And now His Dark Materials is set to be expanded, trepidation is running high among readers. Before the trilogy was released, the story and characters existed only in Pullman’s head, but when we read them, they became ours, too. And since the books were published, Lyra and Will have continued to exist in the minds of readers who loved them.

Pullman’s pen stopped, and our imaginations began. Every reader has their own version of what happened next, and what might have happened before the events of the books. Great fantasy is a starting