After learning that his presumed-dead father may still be alive, Alfonso Perplexon, now fifteen years old, takes on the dangerous task of returning to the land of Dormia to search for him.

In the finale to the Dormia trilogy, the dreaded nursery rhyme comes to life at last as a dark Shadow Tree threatens to cause the world's end. But who will stop it? Alfonso is now an ageling, Resuza and Hill are slaves, Bilblox appears to be a traitor, and Leif is shipwrecked on the edge of a forbidding forest. An ancient prophecy states that the Tree can be destroyed, but the price must be paid in blood, and whoever tries faces certain death. Nonetheless,...