The Dark Is Rising

On the morning of Will Stanton’s eleventh birthday he wakes up to a snow covered world. Nothing strange about that, his birthday is just a few days before Christmas and it had been snowing hard when he went to bed. But this world looks different:

‘The snow was there as it had been a moment before, but not piled now on roofs or stretching flat over lawns and fields. There were no roofs, there were no fields. There were only trees. Will was looking over a great white forest: a forest of massive trees, sturdy as towers and ancient as rock. They were bare of leaves, clad only in the deep snow that lay untouched along every branch, each smallest twig. They were everywhere. They began so close to the house that he was looking out through show more the topmost branches of the nearest tree, could have reached out and shaken them if he had dared to open the window. All around him the trees stretched to the flat horizon of the valley. The only break in that white world of branches was away over to the south, where the Thames ran; he could see the bend in the river marked like a single stilled wave in this white ocean of forest, and the shape of it looked as though the river were wider than it should have been.’

And so Will goes out to explore the new world, the world of several hundred years ago. He discovers he is not just Will Stanton, the seventh son of a seventh son, but one of the ‘Old Ones’, mystical beings engaged in a fight between light and dark, the first of the Old Ones to have been born in 500 years. And Will is the sign-seeker: his quest is ‘to find and to guard the six great Signs of the Light, made over the centuries by the Old Ones ...’

Surprisingly, although this is aimed at an older age group than Over Sea, Under Stone I didn’t enjoy it quite as much. I think the main reason being is that it is one of those books where nothing is ever explained properly to the person on the quest (in this case Will). There are hints, and old poems, but nothing clear cut. I can’t help thinking that everything would be so much easier if everyone just got all the facts on the table at the beginning of the quest, so that the best course of action can be decided upon. Sort of like the Lord of the Rings “Well, the ring has to be thrown into the volcano, and this is exactly where the volcano can be found, and those other suggestions won’t work because ...”

But a decent read and I’ll be carrying on with the series. show less

Opening on Midwinter Eve, this immensely powerful and intensely engaging children's fantasy, the second in Susan Cooper's five-volume Dark Is Rising Sequence, is a book I read again and again as a girl. Will Stanton, who turns eleven on Midwinter Day, coming into his own as one of the Old Ones—servants of the Light, in eternal conflict with the forces of the Dark, which are intent on ruling the world—learns more about his role as the Sign Seeker as he travels through time, visiting England in different centuries. The book follows him on his quest to assemble the six signs, which together form one of the Things of Power that the Light will use to eventually defeat the Dark for all time. It is a journey that is intertwined with his show more large and loving family's celebration of the holiday season, from Midwinter through Christmas, and on to Twelfth Night, and one that will eventually draw in figures and traditions from local folklore, including Herne the Hunter and the Wild Hunt...

Published in 1973, a number of years after the first book in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, which came out in 1965, The Dark Is Rising switches focus a bit, changing protagonist and setting. Whereas that earlier title concerned the three Drew siblings, and their quest to find King Arthur's chalice, hidden on the headland of a small Cornish village, this entry focuses on Will, the youngest of a large Buckinghamshire family, and expands the overarching narrative considerably, exploring the larger and deeper cosmological struggle only hinted at in the earlier book. The Drew children do not appear here, and are not mentioned, although the chalice they found is referenced, as the first of the Things of Power being assembled in the Light's struggle against the Dark. The bridge between the two is really the character of Merriman, the oldest and one of the wisest of the Old Ones, who guides Will through his education and quest.

Beautifully written and wonderfully conceived, it is not difficult to see why this book won a Newbery Honor in 1974. From the time I first read it, I have loved it, and this latest reread, undertaken as part of a project to read the entire series with friends, has not changed my feelings an iota. I still love the use of folklore and mythology throughout, in both overt and discreet ways (so many of the names have a deeper meaning!), I love the settings, and quest itself. I love the poem, which I memorized and would recite with a friend and fellow admirer of the series, when young. I both love and am haunted by the story of Hawkin, whose fate is one I have always struggled with, from childhood to adulthood, worrying away at the questions of choice, justice, and morality. This is truly a marvelous book, and is one I wholeheartedly recommend to all fantasy readers. I finished this reread with a keen desire to proceed on to the next in the series, Greenwitch. show less

This one misses the mark for me. I discovered it through a vid I saw on social media describing a readalong that starts Dec 18—supposedly you can read one chapter a day up to New Year’s and it mimics the book’s timeline. I started late and finished early—the first half was very slow for me, with long meanderings into scenery or exposition that resulted in more pages of description than action. The final quarter speeds up considerably, but I found myself finishing it more to be done with it than because I was swept up in the ride.

There are so many amazing elements in this story, but I found the MC to be so passive. Either he weirdly just knows what to do—either instinctually or through a sudden flash of insight explained only show more by the fact that he is an Old One—or someone tells him what to do. This is supposedly a questing book, but the MC rarely does any questing of his own initiative—he just waits around until an older, wiser character directs him. And for a supposedly rare and timeless race, there are SO MANY Old Ones just milling about, six alone in the MC’s tiny village.

I also don’t feel the book has aged particularly well. The female characters are stereotypes or portrayed negatively, males are portrayed as having all the common sense and wisdom. The one powerful female Old One basically has one cool scene of power and then she fades away like a wilting lily. And there are frequent references to the grandeur of England and the darkness of the “invaders”—kind of AWKWARD to be forgetting all the invading England perpetrated over centuries and the darkness it spread via imperialism, straight-up theft, indentured labor, etc etc etc…

I can see how I may have enjoyed this as a child in the 80s or 90s. But reading it now, it’s just another Eurocentric story in an entire childhood already full of them. I’m glad I gave it a try, but I won’t be wasting my time on the rest. show less

I re-read this because I just listened to the Backlisted podcast episode that was devoted to it and actually ended up bumping my rating *down* half a star.

What Cooper does beautifully is to sketch a scene -- the view from Will's bedroom window the morning of his birthday, the caroling at the manor, the great room where he first meets with the Lady and Merriman -- all were thrillingly evocative. What is fatally lacking is any depth of character and hence lack of anything to drive the plot (what there is of one) forward. Reading this again was like watching cardboard stick figures moving around on a gorgeously rendered stage. I had no memory of any of it from the first time I read it, and frankly I was so bored that it was an effort to show more finish it; I just didn't care.

The book that I kept comparing it to in my mind was [A Wrinkle in Time], where each character was vividly drawn and the story so compelling that although I haven't read it since I was a child, 40 years later I can remember details. show less

I decided to revisit this book, the perfect book for Christmas. There are few that can match it for sheer atmosphere, whether it's the warmth of Will's big, boisterous family, or the strange, timeless, slightly formal ceremonies and rites of the Old Ones, resonant with history and folklore and the odd sadness that comes with Will gaining ancient knowledge and power but in some sense losing his childhood. Then there's the awesome chill of the Dark, the heavy falls of snow, the sinister Rider and the tragic Walker and the sly witch-girl, the siege in the manor house as the cold closes in, and, of course, the final ride and chase and wild hunt through the forests of Windsor and the skies of Twelfth Night as the rain dissolves the heaped show more banks of snow and the floods course over the frozen ground.

Perhaps Will is led through the plot to find the various Signs a bit too much by the hand or the nose. Perhaps he's a bit too passive and accepting, but there's something to be said for that, for a younger reader. Sometimes you want to be guided, shown the right way to pierce the mysteries and find the objects and become something more. It's a kind of comfort, and not one to be sneezed at at Christmas. show less

There might not be any snow on the ground yet here in Kamloops, but I knew that this was hte perfect time to re-read the Dark is Rising. It almost makes me want an insane amount of snow to match the story, but my wiser self prevails. With the Winter Darkness comes the Dark, and there's no Will Stanton around to keep humanity safe! But besides that, this book makes me nostalgic for my book-riddled childhood, where even the books on all the school lists were new and engaging and whole worlds of discovery were left to explore. Obviously I still find new and exciting books to read, but there's something about those early books that stays with me in ways that new books often just miss. It's almost too bad that the popularity of children's show more and young adult fantasy came to the point of making so many terrible movies in the early 2000s, because most of the excellent books (like this one) should stay simply as books! show less

Ages thirteen through fifteen are awful years, both to be and to be around … arrogant and self-centered, yet exuberantly idealistic; excited to explore rationality, yet superstitious to the bone; a compulsion to be social, while also cruel and misanthropic. The one benefit of that miserable time is its ability to read, to inhabit, to own romantic adventure. I wanted to be thirteen again … crazy wish! … as I read Susan Cooper’s fantasy. I longed to rid my brain of adultness, to suspend disbelief in what I have come to accept is reality and revel in melodrama. At several points I almost succeeded … at least enough to enjoy the story.

From page 149, when Will, well-mannered boy, suddenly channels a supernatural identity and talks show more back to the rector:
“‘There’s not really any before and after, is there?’ [Will] said. ‘Everything that matters is outside Time. And comes from there and can go there.’
“Mr. Beaumont turned to him in surprise. ‘You mean infinity, of course, my boy.’
“‘Not altogether,’ said the Old One that was Will. ‘I mean the part of all of us, and of all the things we think and believe, that has nothing to do with yesterday or today or tomorrow because it belongs at a different kind of level. Yesterday is still there, on that level. Tomorrow is there too. You can visit either of them. And all Gods are there, and all the things they have ever stood for. And,’ he added sadly, ‘the opposite, too.’
“‘Will,’ said the rector, staring at him, ‘I am not sure whether you should be exorcised or ordained. You and I must have some long talks, very soon.’” show less