Book Review: The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper

The Dark is Rising

by Susan Cooper

I honestly can’t remember when I first read this book, it was probably either something I picked out of the school library as a child OR something that a family I babysat for in high school was reading at bedtime. Either way, it quickly became one of my favorites and I have read it MANY times over the years. I had been just waiting for the chance to read it to my own daughter, but I try not to force the books I want to read on her, so I had to wait, and wait . . . and wait.

Finally, she picked it out of the options. As we read, I realized that it is a bit different from the books that we are used to reading together. It’s a very literary book. The plotting is good and the descriptions rich and full, but the exposition can get just a tiny bit tedious when you are used to more action.

I still love it though.

Will Stanton is the seventh son of a seventh son and lives in a big old farmhouse with his large family in a little English village. On his eleventh birthday, Will learns that he is the last of the Old Ones, born to hold back the Dark from taking over the world.

It’s a lovely story, full of family, village friends, and mythology from Arthurian and Celtic legend.

It all starts on Midwinter’s Eve, when Will goes out to take care of the rabbits, but they recoil from his touch. His dogs seem skittish around him too, and the radio goes berserk every time he gets near it. He and his brother James take a cart to get some hay from Farmer Dawson and the rooks are spooked too. There’s a tramp wandering around, and Farmer Dawson refers to him as The Walker. The farmer also gives Will something for good luck, a curious iron ornament of a circle quartered by a cross, and tells him to put it on his belt like an extra buckle.

So begins a tremendous journey that takes Will Stanton, The Sign Seeker, on the adventure of a lifetime, right in his own backyard, awakening him to the magical nature of the people around him and the stories of the legends that are part of his world.

The Dark is Rising was published in 1973 and I think you’ll see quickly how other legends influenced it, and how it influenced future fantasy.

I highly recommend it if you have any love at all for the fantasy genre.