Silver on the Tree (by Susan Cooper)

I’m pleased that I finally decided to read through Susan Cooper’s ‘Dark is Rising’ sequence of five books. My sons liked this very much when they were young teenagers, and I had probably read a couple of the books back then. I hadn’t remembered the overall storyline, and am pretty sure I had not previously read ‘Silver on the Tree’, the last in the sequence.

The cover of our 1977 paperback edition has rather a strange and somewhat disturbing image showing - apparently - a sword embedded in s...