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The Dark Is Rising (The Dark is Rising #2)

by Susan Cooper (Goodreads Author)

4.05 of 5 stars 4.05 · rating details · 22,249 ratings · 1,099 reviews

On Midwinter Day and his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton discovers he is the last of immortal Old Ones dedicated to keeping the world from domination by the forces of evil, the Dark. He must find six magical Signs for the final battle.

Paperback, 244 pages

Published November 30th 1986 by Aladdin (first published 1973)

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Mar 18, 2010 Ceridwen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: younger Ceridwen

Recommended to Ceridwen by: Eh!

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

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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Jun 14, 2010 Aerin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm starting to find that I write my best - or, I should say, my most fervent - reviews when I'm halfway through a book. It's when I'm in the middle that I have thoughts, opinions, arguments, things to say. When I close a book for the final time, that intensity starts to slowly boil off. Unless it was a particularly thought-provoking or emotionally moving book, getting all worked up again to write a review feels like a chore, fighting against entropy - I just want to move on to something new.

Of...more

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Mar 30, 2010 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Elizabeth by: Ceridwen and Falstaff

Shelves: gods-myths-heroes, in-by-of-england, reviewed, fantasy-sci-fi, fey

This book has no nipples. Now, if you're a parent who has been letting your child use the internet unsupervised, I recommend reconsidering that if the first sentence was distressing to you. For the kids who may be reading this unsupervised, this is actually going to be a really boring review where I talk about adult themes in children's literature. Go find your nipples elsewhere, kids.

Now that the disclaimer is over, back to the nipples, sort of. Karen and I, in a review I cannot find, got into...more

32 likes · like · see review

Apr 12, 2013 Jon added it

Shelves: fiction, fantasy, young-adult, read-in-my-40s, liked-it

3.5 stars

Due to the acquisition of GoodReads by Amazon on March 28, 2013 and my existing and continuing boycott of all things Amazon, the review I wrote after reading this book now resides, safe and secure, at my blog. You can read it by following this link: http://bit.ly/1231ElH

11 likes · like · see review

Aug 20, 2007 Arianna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 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 just shrugged and told him to suck i...more

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Dec 12, 2009 Nikki rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites, fantasy, children-s-and-ya, arthurian, based-on-myth-saga-etc

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, J...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)

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May 15, 2013 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: boy wizards, Old Ones, everyone

Shelves: fantasy, female-author, children, england, reread, owned

Originally read: 1979

My absolute favorite series as a child. One of these days I need to reread it. (ETA: see below.) A bit like Harry Potter, but darker in tone (and of course, Will Stanton predates Harry Potter by decades). A shame that Hollywood's treatment of this classic book was so epically bad. It should be noted that while technically this is book two in the series, the saga really begins here, with Over Sea, Under Stone being a prequel of sorts.

Reread: 2013

I first read this book when I...more

7 likes · like · see review

Apr 19, 2013 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: childrens, fantasy, holiday

3.75 stars. Today, long past childhood, I read this book for this first time. High marks for the fabulous writing (see excerpt below) and for the vivid setting (I felt I was there, during the Christmas season, in Hunterscombe, England).

The plot is fairly gripping -- especially the scene in the church on Christmas Day, after everyone left, and the scene in Will's home, when a VERY unwelcome guest was invited to come in, and the scenes of the bone-biting deep-freeze that struck. Other good scenes...more 3.75 stars. Today, long past childhood, I read this book for this first time. High marks for the fabulous writing (see excerpt below) and for the vivid setting (I felt I was there, during the Christmas season, in Hunterscombe, England).

The plot is fairly gripping -- especially the scene in the church on Christmas Day, after everyone left, and the scene in Will's home, when a VERY unwelcome guest was invited to come in, and the scenes of the bone-biting deep-freeze that struck. Other good scenes come to mind, too.

However, gradually it became a bit too easy for Will to find the Signs. All six came easily to hand, and all six were hidden right there in his own village. What are the chances?

Also, Will never had to sacrifice anything in his epic quest to save the world, even though he had to make a very difficult choice to pass "the testing" later in the book. In Tolkien's The Return of the King Frodo and Samwise suffered loss. In The Chronicles of Narnia Edmund paid a price for falling afoul of the White Witch. I started to realize that NOTHNG BAD could happen to any of the protagonists in this book (not even The Lady). Nor to Will's family (unless you want to count a sprained ankle).

Characterization: The portrayal of Merriman was pretty cool, but I wanted to know more about him. That's okay, though. There is an entire series to learn more.

I could not quite buy into Cooper's portrayal of Will as both an ordinary little boy and an Old One, the protector of the planet. It was just odd to me, how Will moved back and forth from Old One to child.

Good portrayal of The Walker. Cooper portrayed this character with some complexity. There was a reason for his choices, and even though I did not agree with them, I understood them.

The weakest link in the book is Cooper's almost tautological portrayal of the villain -- this vague entity called The Dark. What is it? Who is The Rider? The Light is Good and the Dark is Bad, with no intermediate dusk. No yin-yang, either. (Cooper is also tautological in another sense -- her redundancy when discussing the Dark, which is coming, yes it's rising, yes it's gaining power).

Writing: Such a pleasure to read Cooper's descriptions. I felt like I could feel the icy cold floods, hear the rooks croaking overhead, see the light blazing in the dim church. For example, I loved her opening portrayal of the dreary farmyard, just before Christmas:

“The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops. Further back there were only the flat fields of Dawson's farm, dimly white-striped. All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere.”

(less)

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Feb 27, 2008 Robert rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 26, 2007 Trin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, childrens, english-lit

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 didn't. I still...more

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Jun 20, 2007 Lake Oz Fic Chick rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: folks who like good vs. evil fantasies

Shelves: bests-wow

"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 the children's se...more

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Nov 09, 2011 Dorothea rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I loved this book very much in my early teens. Unfortunately it was a disappointing re-read. The imagery is still very beautiful, but I now find the worldbuilding unsatisfying.

It suffers from the unquestioning existence of Good and Evil labels. The Good are good because they are born that way. Merriman, the protagonist's teacher, places great emphasis on the burden of being for the Light, which I now find disturbing, not noble: their burden is that they have to be misunderstood by the ordinary p...more I loved this book very much in my early teens. Unfortunately it was a disappointing re-read. The imagery is still very beautiful, but I now find the worldbuilding unsatisfying.

It suffers from the unquestioning existence of Good and Evil labels. The Good are good because they are born that way. Merriman, the protagonist's teacher, places great emphasis on the burden of being for the Light, which I now find disturbing, not noble: their burden is that they have to be misunderstood by the ordinary people about them, and especially that they have to sacrifice the people about them. This includes memory-wipes to protect from what the Good deem unilaterally to be too much knowledge, and also the changing and endangering of ordinary people's lives, mandated by the rules of the magic that the Good serve. In the end, as with many fantasy stories, the Good side seems to be good based mainly on poetic associations -- light, Christmas, warmth.

The Evil are said to become evil by choice. This might give some opportunity for interesting, humanizing characterization of the evil characters, but it does not in the case of the "Rider" (who is marked as evil mainly by the sinister feeling he produces in the protagonist) or of Maggie Barnes, who is the only character in the book to express any sort of sexuality, and who is referred to dismissively by the eleven-year-old protagonist as "the girl."

*spoiler*

The one character whose choice of evil we do get to see is the Walker. We learn that he was an orphan, Merriman's liege man who loved him like a father. Because of their bond, he was chosen to be part of a spell protecting the Book of Gramarye. Using this spell, when Merriman retrieved the Book for the protagonist, he used the Walker's life as collateral. The Walker was shocked to realize that Merriman was willing to risk his death, and decided to betray him. Even though Merriman (in godlike fashion) understood how the Walker would choose, he cursed him to continue to help the side of Light by carrying one of its symbols for hundreds of years, living as a tramp and never being allowed even to die.

Besides seeing this situation as weighted against the Walker, on this reading I realized that the story is also assigning moral value to feudal loyalty. It would have best helped the Light if the Walker had accepted that it was right for Merriman to use his life for his cause. Instead he wanted to be Merriman's moral equal -- as Merriman puts it, "he loves as a man, wanting proof of love in return." But in the morality of the story, Merriman and the Light are too great to be able to relate to the Walker with equality; what they take from him is different from what they give to him, and when he protests that the taking is too much, they give him misery.

Other parts of the story also promote this idea of traditional, hierarchical relations. Most explicitly is the later episode in which the Dark is assailing the village with winter storms and the local gentrywoman offers to shelter everyone in her hall. The protagonist's father's refusal to take his own family there is presented as stubborn, prejudiced pride which has to be overcome. Then, the scene of the villagers gathered around the aristocrat is one of appropriate protection, beautiful and harmonious.

These things are mostly subtle, but they align the old, patriarchal social order with the Light -- another unfortunate tendency common to many fantasy stories.(less)

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Feb 16, 2013 Lisa Jenn Bigelow rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is my favorite Christmastime read. Atmospheric, adventurous, and full of the Celtic mythology that underlies the shortest days of the year but now is largely forgotten.

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Oct 07, 2007 Martha added it · review of another edition

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

(October book club)

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Dec 04, 2012 Amy Greenfield rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: beloved-books

There are some books that shape us, and for me this is one of them. I still have my original copy, the broken binding and stained pages a testament to how often I read it. The way Susan Cooper draws her battle lines – Dark and Light, Good and Evil – is very stark, but almost everything else about this book is subtle and real, and the writing is superb. Scenes and pictures from this book have gone so deep that it almost feels as if I lived them myself: the rooks, the Signs, the beauty and terror...more

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May 18, 2008 Devin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult-literature

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 make any sacrifices; seri...more

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Jan 28, 2008 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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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Jan 08, 2008 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: for-children

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 compared with A W...more

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Feb 28, 2011 Beth A. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, fantasy, audio-book

Initially, I was disappointed that this book didn’t continue with the Over Sea, Under Stone characters, but I loved the increased energy in this book, and that it contained more fantasy elements. It’s a classically themed good vs. evil story with some interesting magic and time travel ideas. Will’s character was easy to identify with, and the story line was captivating. I really enjoyed it, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the next book, Greenwitch, takes me.

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Mar 12, 2009 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...

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Aug 01, 2010 Erin Reilly-Sanders rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, juvenile, fiction

After the gaping disappointment that Over Sea Under Stone was, this book was great! It had magic and adventures and stuff happening and fighting the evil dark etc. I really liked that there was clear and present danger from an enemy that was interesting. What is most interesting is probably the references to folk lore and symbolism of different elements. There also seemed to be more clues to follow than the rather dull treasure hunt in the previous book. It is also intriguing that a child or you...more

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Jan 19, 2009 Tricia added it · review of another edition

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 is L...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Von Fritz rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi-and-fantasy

OMG! Seems like I'm a Cooper fan now. Having finished the second book of The Dark is Rising sequence, I can't help myself but to crave for more.

The Dark is Rising, is far better than the first, Over Sea Under Stone. Though there are still some boring chapters, at least, much revelations about sequence the book gave to me. And that's giving me the itch to read the other sequels.

In Over Sea Under Stone, Great Uncle Merry was a mysterious man with many secrets. The three Drew children who were the...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Stephanie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adventure, young-adult

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. On his eleventh birthday Will Stanton discovers he is an Old One--one of the ancient and immortal forces of the Light. He embarks on a journey between Midwinter's Night and the twelfth night of Christmas to find and join the six Signs of Light. Along the way Will must discover how to use his new found power and have the confidence to use them. He still tries to fit into his normal family life, but finds it more and more difficult as he changes and grows into his powers. Will's quest is only one...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Maythavee rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am very annoyed with myself for buying the second book of a series again! But honestly I didn't know that 'The Dark is Rising' is the second book in The Dark is Rising Sequence.

The story starts when Will Stanton had his eleventh birthday during Midwinter. He is the last of the Old ones, the immortal, powerful and wise people. He must find all the signs of power to fight the Dark and he must contend with the Dark Rider among other things. The book started off very slow and it wasn't until like...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Nigel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, ya

A lovely book and it's at its loveliest when it focuses on the ordinary -- the village, the Stanton family, daily life, Christmas. I appreciate the detail -- the ever-so-slight lingering echo of the war, sixpences, that little bit of class friction, the faintest whiff of the empire. Those are my favorite parts and they're sketched out so well -- not in excessive detail, but so perfectly that everyone has a clear personality and the setting comes into focus as sharp as glass. I especially like th...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Nikki rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, children-s-and-ya

A book which I can never be unbiased about. It's just always spoken to me, ever since I heard the radio play at the impressionable age of eight or nine or so. Funny to think I did pass it over in the library, once, aged about thirteen -- it was in an edition on its own, and I didn't want to read it like that, because I'd figured out there was an earlier book, and I hate reading things out of order.

This is where the series starts to mature a little. It's still pretty much Dark vs. Light rather th...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Vivian Coria added it · review of another edition

susan copper , The Dark Is Rising , had me stuck on the amount of dramatic actions and an odd character who seemed very quirt at first . the theme of this book is you wont know who you really are untill you know what your capable of.i hontestly disliked the authors style of writing . the way he put his main character through various situations and some how still got through it . i thouhgt it was just confusing . i also didnt like how the settings would go form the present to the future and just...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Mara rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"The Dark is Rising" by Susan Cooper is an intense fantasy tale. Will Stanton has been living a normal life when on his 11th birthday, three days before Christmas, thins begin to change. For the next twelve days of Christmas, he has many terrifying and delightful adventures. He is trying to remove the power of the Dark from the world. By using six signs, he is able to vanquish the Dark for the moment being. It has a cliffhanger ending. This is the second in the series also name "The Dark is Risi...more

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About Susan Cooper

Susan Cooper was born in 1935, and grew up in England's Buckinghamshire, an area that was green countryside then but has since become part of Greater London. As a child, she loved to read, as did her younger brother, who also became a writer. After attending Oxford, where she became the first woman to ever edit that university's newspaper, Cooper worked as a reporter and feature writer for London'...more

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Books by Susan Cooper

Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark is Rising, #1)

Silver on the Tree (The Dark is Rising, #5)

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Trivia About The Dark is Rising

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Quotes from The Dark is Rising

“The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops. Further back there were only the flat fields of Dawson's farm, dimly white-striped. All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere.” — 10 people liked it

“Too many!' James shouted, and slammed the door behind him.” — 6 people liked it

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The Dark Is Rising (The Dark is Rising #2)

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