The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper

I read The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper over Christmas 2020 into the new year. I thought it a beautiful series, with a charm that made the interweaving “Chosen One” storyline and Arthurian Mythology somehow shine, proving that cliches can go beyond their source material, with a gifted writer who has a different take. 

Over Sea, Under Stone (#1) is a children’s Summer adventure in Cornwall, hinting at greater things. The Dark Is Rising (#2) grew into something larger (the tale grew in the telling), expanding on the universe of Cooper’s dreams, with a lush poem that prophesies the events of the sequels. Greenwitch (#3) is a brilliant fairytale. The Grey King (#4) is an epic set in Wales, and exists as a magnificent fantasy book even without the rest of the series. Silver On The Tree (#5) is a coming together of all the moving parts, tying up all loose storylines and collecting all Plot MacGuffins… but the end is actually quite emotional. 

I fell in love with this series, especially with Cooper’s prose style and character work.  They are subtle yet moving. The characters are all likeable (except the baddies), some are shaded with greys. The best are Will (our main hero), Bran Davies (shines in the 4th book) and Jane Drew (shines in the 3rd book). 

The plot is the idea that The Dark Is Rising again and always has been, the last battle for control of our world and the Other is beginning, in the quaintest yet most deliberate of places. 

The books evoke the sense of a melancholic childhood, one of not truly fitting in, but one with love. They are filled with escapist good times but also mystery, danger and trauma. The Cornwall setting used throughout was homely and vivid, the Welsh setting in the fourth book was even stronger, sheep farms and doom mounds and foggy landscapes. 

When I have children, this is probably the first series I’ll sneakily leave lying around for them to gaze at the covers and think “ooh what’s that?”

I will avidly seek Susan Cooper’s other work. 

Even as a 25 year old, I enjoyed these books thoroughly, they caught me at the right moment (Christmas), dripping with a gloomy, dark British atmosphere - of villains waiting on street corners under a lamppost light that swirls in the mist, of Arthurian legend existing in the fabric of our beings as people of the British Isles, of jam and toast for breakfast and a hunt for the Holy Grail before dinner. 

Best Book - The Grey King (#4)

The Dark Is Rising Poem by Susan Cooper

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 will return, and one go alone.

Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;

Wood from the burning, stone out of song;

Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;

Six Signs the circle, and the grail gone before.

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold

Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;

Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;

All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree.