The Dark is Rising (The First Book in The Dark Is Rising Sequence)

by Susan Cooper

The Dark is Rising

by
Susan Cooper

book data

5,643 ratings, 4.04 average rating, 547 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		38%
4		34%
3		19%
2		5%
1		1%

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published

February 1976 by Atheneum Books (first published 1973)

details

Paperback

literary awards

Newbery Honor (1974)

isbn

0689704208 (isbn13: 9780689704208)

description

"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 w

…more

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Mar 17, 2010

Ceridwen rated it:

(review of isbn 1416905286)

bookshelves: books-about-books, fantasy, rule-britannia, young-adult

Read in March, 2010

recommended to Ceridwen by: Eh!
recommends it for: younger Ceridwen

So, I'm going to start this review with a big love letter to my friend Eh!, and then I'll actually talk about this book, so if you want to skip the love-in, that's cool. Eh! mailed me this series when I expressed an almost idle curiosity in it, and I didn't understand until I read it what a powerful act of trust this was. These are her childhood books: the paper yellowed, a crease on the front flap from use, small finger-shaped edges on the back flap, that odd, woody, not-unpleasant smell of old...more So, I'm going to start this review with a big love letter to my friend Eh!, and then I'll actually talk about this book, so if you want to skip the love-in, that's cool. Eh! mailed me this series when I expressed an almost idle curiosity in it, and I didn't understand until I read it what a powerful act of trust this was. These are her childhood books: the paper yellowed, a crease on the front flap from use, small finger-shaped edges on the back flap, that odd, woody, not-unpleasant smell of old paper, her name written carefully with the looping cursive of young women. I read from an artifact of her younger self, and it almost makes me shake to think that she found me worthy enough to entrust this book to my hands, that she would mail this book across the country to a person she has never seen in the flesh.

I was a bookish girl, which may not come as a huge freaking surprise. I spend my young life stoppered up and angry, unable to find the words that I could use to speak myself into some sort of equilibrium with the universe as it stands. I was broken by a trip to the USSR at 16; the journal I kept originally as some sort of catalog of events morphing into a true diary of my heart and mind; a catalog of less tangible events. But before I wrote, I read, finding comfort and understanding in the minds of fictional people, testing the edges of my emotional boundaries through imaginary action. My feelings toward the books of Madeleine L'Engle are entirely out of bounds of their literary merit, not that they are bad by any stretch.

I wish that I had encountered these books younger, so that they could sink into the soft sand of my forming personality. I'm not really criticizing here; I've just gotten old and I've read too much, so I keep distracting myself with thoughts like, “Aha! the Stantons are the model for the Weasleys in Harry Potter” or “The way Cooper deals with prophesy, through the re-purposing of folk-songs and -tales, is a fascinating glimpse into post-WWII nostalgia.” I'm just too grumpy and crappy not to be bothered by an almost tautological sense of good and evil here, but, man, if Cooper doesn't get so many things right that these are almost personal failings and not written in the text.

First, there's her prose, which is abso-total-lutely fantastic. This isn't hasty or, the faint-praise of adjectives, workman-like. Like this, from the FIRST PAGE: “The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world.” Without a lot of flowering poetical b.s., Cooper imbues the landscape with the Christmas hopes and disappointments of the boys who look out over it. The thin snow should apologize for not living up to the expectations of children. Lovely! My real freak-out happened when our young protagonist settles in to read one of those books of power that fantasists are always going on about. Again, I quibble not, despite my slightly dismissive tone. As an avid reader, I'm often puzzled by the paucity of good descriptions of the pleasures of reading, despite an almost religious fetishization of the books themselves in some books. (There IS a good one in Byatt's Possession a Romance) Then there's this:

“He might read no more than one line - I have journeyed as an eagle - and he was soaring suddenly aloft as one winged, learning through feeling, feeling the way of resting on the wind and tilting round the rising columns of air, of sweeping and soaring, of looking down at patchwork-green hills capped with dark trees, and a winding, glinting river between.”

I don't get the impression that Cooper is trying to be clever here, but she is, dropping a small line in italics which suggests whole experiences to our reader-hero, the way her words and the experience of the words double and treble with the layer of myself as reader, soaring out into wordless understanding of unlived sensation. Fantastic. Bloody brilliant.

One of my weird convergences that I brought to my reading was a recent reading-induced nightmare of a world ending in snow and cold white, with black flying terrors haunting the edges of a too-blue sky. The story of Will Stanton awakening the day of his eleventh birthday to find his power as an Old One, the last in line of Old Ones, locked in a battle with the Dark mounts in drifts of white against the kitchen window, this locked into my half-remembered dream, and I shivered not only from the experience of the words that describe that cold, but the cold of my somnambulist life. Will, Old One and boy, breaks the cold, like waking, but this doesn't end the tale. Instead he struggles though an adolescence, like snowbanks, that does not recede simply because the sky clears.

If only I'd known Will when I was his age. As it stands, I'm humbled to meet him in the books of a friend who was gracious enough to loan me these pieces of her reading life. Thank you, Eh!.

(less)

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29 comments

Aug 20, 2007

Arianna rated it:

(review of isbn 0689710879)

bookshelves: fantasy-and-scifi, liked-it

Getting my brother (12) to read is liking getting a cat to take a bath, getting a high-schooler to go to school, getting a cheerleader to go to computer club.
All those really difficult things in life.

I read this series myself about a year or two ago, so when he needed a book to do for literature in his homeschool, I suggested that he pick this one and I'd do it with him.

He moaned and groaned and hated life, that he'd have to do something so awful as reading.
I ...more

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Jan 07, 2009

Jon rated it:

(review of isbn 0689710879)

bookshelves: fantasy, fiction, read-in-my-40s, young-adult

Read in September, 2009

3.5 stars

A good adventure quest tale. A bit lacking in character development, but there were some heart-pounding scenes that made up for it. Towards the end, I almost had a sense deja vu, like I was reading Moonheart by DeLint, which got me thinking this could be classified as early urban fantasy.

As with most Young Adult fiction, the lines of good and evil are clearly drawn. Only one or two characters traversed the grey, pulling and tugging against the inevitable tid...more

Like this review? yes (7 people liked it)

4 comments

Dec 07, 2008

Nikki rated it:

(review of isbn 0689710879)

bookshelves: arthurian, based-on-myth-saga-etc, couldnt-live-without, fantasy, younger-readers

Read in December, 2009

I suspect that the books of this sequence are among the most beautiful I've read. I get that feeling especially with this book. The tone here has changed already from the Blyton-esque kids-on-a-great-adventure of the first book, and the character is different accordingly. It's almost a bildungsroman, for all that we only see less than a month of an eleven year old boy's life.

One of the main things I love about this sequence, particularly from this book on, is the characterisation. Wh...more I suspect that the books of this sequence are among the most beautiful I've read. I get that feeling especially with this book. The tone here has changed already from the Blyton-esque kids-on-a-great-adventure of the first book, and the character is different accordingly. It's almost a bildungsroman, for all that we only see less than a month of an eleven year old boy's life.

One of the main things I love about this sequence, particularly from this book on, is the characterisation. Where Simon, Jane and Barney were simplistic but also realistic in the first book, Will is now much more layered. Literally. There's a part of him that's a boy, and there's a part of him that's ancient and ageless, and in this book he's got to learn to balance the two, use the two, keep them separate where he can. In my opinion, this is beautifully done. One minute he's standing with the Lady and Merriman, fighting back the dark -- the next, boy like, he's making mistakes through over-enthusiasm. At first he cannot accept that he's not just an ordinary boy, and then he's playing tricks with his new-found powers. At the end, he acknowledges that sometimes he wishes he could just be an ordinary boy, but not always.

It's not just Will, though. Despite it being a short book, you catch glimpses of so many characters who are worth thinking about, and yet Susan Cooper never loses focus either. The Stanton family are particularly well-drawn, in my opinion. There's so many of them that you can't get a fully-rounded picture of any of them, but you still feel as if maybe you've been to tea with them a couple of times -- or I do, anyway. I feel like I'd like to date Paul, I'd want to hit Mary, I'd antagonise James, I'd... It's wonderful how Susan Cooper shows us so many characters and makes us care about them, so briefly and succinctly.

The writing, of course, I think is lovely. I whisper it aloud to myself. There are some beautiful images and scenes -- the Doors, for example, and the appearance of the ship, the signs... I love the way Susan Cooper writes.

I've read reviews where people felt that nothing happened in these books. I find that hard to understand -- there's moments of real brooding menace, real magic, but I think people who are expecting swordfights and high fantasy in that sense are going to be disappointed. Ultimately, the sequence concludes that the battle against the Dark is fought in men's hearts. That, in some ways, is not a "satisfying" conclusion -- yet it's a realistic one, and that's something I like.

Reread in December 2009. The bit that struck me most this time, somehow, was the dead king who carried the Sign of Water. Beautiful.(less)

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

4 comments

Feb 27, 2008

Robert rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

I read this many years ago, and liked it. When the movie came out (not a very good movie), I wondered what my 43-year-old self would think of my hazy memory of what my 14-year-old self had thought. Turns out my 14-year-old self wasn't much of a critic. The Dark is Rising was quite disappointing, making it all the more surprising that it won awards and stuff. I guess I can kind of see why--the writing is at least meant to seem deep. The fact that it has a literary style of any kind is a novelty, ...more

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Aug 14, 2007

Trin rated it:

(review of isbn 0689710879)

bookshelves: childrens, english-lit, fantasy

Read in August, 2007

Reread. I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie—and more importantly, I saw Darcy's furious reaction to the trailer for the upcoming movie, and I realized that I didn't remember these books well enough to be properly furious myself. I read the first two in the series, in the wrong order, when I was much younger, but didn't recall being particularly engaged by them, which was why I never continued. I figured that, rereading them as an adult, I'd see the error of my ways.

Sadly, I di...more

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Jun 20, 2007

Lake Oz Fic Chick rated it:

(review of isbn 0689710879)

bookshelves: bests-wow

recommends it for: folks who like good vs. evil fantasies

"The Walker is abroad." Will Stanton hears these words on the eve of his eleventh birthday, and from the time he hears them, everything is changed. He soon learns that he is an Old One, a warrior for the Light. It is his mission to search for the six magical signs that will be needed for the world-shaking battle between the evil forces of the Dark and the Light, chronicled in this and the other four books in Cooper's The Dark is Rising series. Because you'll find these books in th...more

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Sep 20, 2007

Martha added it (review of isbn 1416949658)

bookshelves: classics, fantasy, middle-grade, newbery, park-slope-bookclub, re-read

Read in October, 2007

(October book club)

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

5 comments

May 09, 2008

Devin rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

bookshelves: young-adult-literature

Read in May, 2008

I saw the movie "The Seeker" which I now use as a standard to judge all movies I really dislike; but I was required by my class to read it so I did.
Honestly, the book was entertaining. But I still didn't like it for multiple reasons:
The beginning was really hard to follow. Susan Cooper needs to make it less work for the reader to try and figure out what's going on. The plot was good; the classic battle between the darkness and the light. But Will Stanton didn't have to mak...more

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Jan 17, 2008

Julie rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

recommended to Julie by: Jamie

I liked this book, but I had a few issues with it. Her use of adverbs after dialogue tags was driving me crazy, but eliminating those is a more recent convention, I think (this book is 45 years old). Also, I really liked having an 11-year-old protagonist, but he didn't do enough. In fact, sometimes he screwed things up and had to be rescued. And the whole light/dark imagery became trite at times. The coolest thing about it was the whole mystery of it. We didn't really know what was going on--we...more

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2 comments

Oct 28, 2007

Alex rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

bookshelves: for-children

Read in December, 2007

Stop me if you've heard this one: A boy living in England discovers on his 11th birthday that he has special powers. An early encounter with an enemy leaves him with a scar. With guidance from a few mentors, he is trained and learns about the Dark, which he can vanquish by collecting several ancient objects.

Well, putting aside my increasing irritation with J.K. Rowling's lack of originality, I really enjoyed this (earlier) novel, which was surprisingly well-written. (Especially co...more

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Mar 08, 2009

Rebecca rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

Read in March, 2009

Fantasy which re-animates my local myths, such as Herne the Hunter, but loses a point for omitting Uffington... where St George slew the dragon and Alfred the Great defeated the Vikings and Kate Bush went Cloudbusting...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRHA9W-zE...

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3 comments

Jan 19, 2009

Tricia added it (review of isbn 1416949658)

If I had known that this book was part of a series, I may have hesitated to dive into the middle of a saga that spans five books. I'd have been right. Susan Cooper works a fantastical plotline into a coming of age story and a boy's ultimate destiny. The series is based on Arthurian myths, with many connections to Celtic and Norse legend and is written primarily for older children and young adults. Think white-haired wizards, power to stop time, immortal souls and disappearing doorways. This ...more

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Mar 08, 2010

Julia rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

bookshelves: young-adult

Read in January, 2010

When our librarian and I were discussing the Percy Jackson books, she recommended this one to me. I had heard of the movie (which got awful reviews), but not this book. In a polar opposite reaction to the Percy Jackson set, I found myself caught up in the WRITING more than the characters or plot. Cooper's writing style is mesmerizing, woven into a style which reminded me of Poe in points.

The only reason I gave the book 3 stars is that, again unlike Riorden, the characters were more o...more

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Jan 11, 2010

kaitlyn rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

bookshelves: newberied-and-honored

I didn't realize that this book was the second in a series when I started reading it. It felt like a self-contained book for the most part, but maybe if I read the first book first some of my complaints wouldn't exist.

OK: I thought it was an interesting book; it was well written and had an intriguing premise. BUT: As hard as I tried, I could not relate to Will. Crazy things happen to him and he just accepts it. If I were him I would be (a) freaking out and (b) asking a ton of questi...more

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Oct 26, 2009

Leah rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

Owns a copy — Read in September, 2009

recommended to Leah by: Dustin Gardy

After reading the second book in The Dark is Rising Sequence I have to say that I'm glad that the story and characters are further developing from what they were in Over Sea, Under Stone. In this book, the reader is introduced to Will Stanton, last of the 'Old Ones,' and receives some explanation for the behavior of Merriman Lyon (or Gummery) in the first book.

In some ways I now understand the style of the first book a little better. In Over Sea, Under Stone, the reader is effectivel...more

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Jul 19, 2009

Miste rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

Read in July, 2009

recommends it for: Amy Wallace

I read this because it was on Newsweeks "What to read now. And Why" list. It was a list of 50 books and I had read only 1! (Shocking I know!) Actually alot of them I really don't want to read no matter what they said about it. This one sounded intriguing though--even though it was a young adult book. It is a Newberry Award winner and deservedly so. It was #36 on the list and here is what Newsweek said "Forget Harry Potter. In the tradition of Tolkein, this series of novels ab...more

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Jun 30, 2009

Matt rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

Read in January, 1981

Forget the movie, which was total garbage, and buy this book for any child, especially young boys, who love adventure, and magic, and mystery.

This is, hands down, one of my favorite series from childhood. Cooper has the very very rare knack of writing for young people without either writing down to them or treating them like adults who have been shrunk in the wash.

Based in roughly modern day England, this book is wholesome and good without being saccharine, and i...more

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Dec 13, 2008

Christy rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

Read in January, 2006

This is THE book to read in the month of December. The second book in the acclaimed "Dark is Rising Sequence" written in the sixties/ seventies by Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising is the story of Will Stanton who is about to turn 11 around Mid-Winter, in the days preceeding Christmas. Animals and radios are acting strangely around him, rooks are flying raucously, and there is talk of "the Walker" abroad. Will discovers on his birthday that he has been born to take his place i...more

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Dec 12, 2009

Platoeatssouls rated it:

(review of isbn 1416949658)

bookshelves: scifi

Read in October, 2009

I seem to have joined the ranks of grad students reading YA novels.

TDiR is one of those books that could only have been set in England. Walking around in the US, there just aren't centuries of history to draw upon (in the same sense as there are in the UK, e.g. written history; I'm not going to get into an argument with you about American Indians etc.).

Anyway, this was really a re-read for me, since I read it as a kid. It's definitely not the same book I read the first ...more

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