The Dark is Rising
“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….”
I haven’t updated my “What I’ve Been Reading” section of this site for quite a while, though I’ve been a busy reader lately. I’ve just completed a series of books that I initially thought I should have read many years ago. I read Lloyd Alexander (@amazon.com) in late elementary school and David Eddings (@amazon.com) in junior high, but I had never heard of Susan Cooper till the middle of January. I was chatting casually with a colleague of sorts when I mentioned something about my British background, specifically my English and Welsh ancestry. I’m 1/2 British, with about 1/2 of that being Welsh, so there’s a lot of that land in me. Anyway, this person asked if I had read Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence (@amazon.com) and I replied that I hadn’t and asked what it was. He said it was based on welsh and english mythology and though it was written for children it was enjoyable at all ages. I was looking for a book to read at the time so I hit the library and grabbed the first volume Over Sea, Under Stone. I immediately identified with Ms. Coopers writing style and especially her feeling for the geographical area where she had set the story. The first book is set in a small fictional fishing village in Cornwall, and her description of the villagers and the landscape brought back some pretty strong memories of being in that type of village both in England when I was very young, and in Italy 11 years ago. I’ve always had a strong affection for the sea (probably fed by the fact that I don’t get to be near it very often), so I was hooked within the first few pages.
Once I’d finished the first book I went online looking for commentary from other readers. There isn’t much that goes into any kind of depth, but I did find a sort of consensus that Over Sea, Under Stone was the weakest of the five books. So with that in mind I went back to the library and grabbed the second through fourth parts, The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch and The Grey King.
I won’t say much about plot here, both because I don’t much like giving spoilers and because the plot in and of itself is not the real reason for reading these books. Though the plot is interesting, if maybe a bit juvenile (like the target audience), my growing love for these stories was born of the concern for humanity’s lost traditions and detachment from nature that Ms. Cooper and I obviously share. The second installment is set about 30 miles west of where my mother grew up in London. The area is dominated by small farms and small villages on the brink of the suburban explosion that took over the greater London area in the late 60s and early 70s, as well as the more general Americanization of the whole world, with its attendant disregard for local mythology and customs. The author weaves this sort of sentiment throughout all five of the books to varying degrees, but most obviously in the fifth volume, Silver on the Tree, where she openly condemns the constant flow of tourists visiting a small area of the northern coast of Wales. But, at the same time she laments the relentless march of progress, she celebrates the unique quality of what is being lost. This and other thematic elements are the backdrop for an epic struggle between Good and Evil, the first personified as a great circle of “Old Ones” that stretches back to the beginning of time, not human, but occupying places among us as they fight the continual surge of the “Dark.” Book three heads back to Cornwall and the mythical Green Witch legend. It’s the shortest of the five, but contains two passages that have really stuck in my memory… one is a trip under the ocean to visit a powerful goddess of the deep, the other the result of angering the Green Witch who then unleashes the power of the ocean upon the sleepy little village, with catastrophic, yet mercifully temporary results. The fourth book is set among the hillside sheep farms of northern Wales, beneath menacing ancient mountains, and is laced with rich Welsh legend and language. The fifth book ties all the stories up with a final confrontation between Light and Dark and travels across much of British history and geography. The final result is a shining example of the power of fantasy as a teaching tool, and has won a well deserved place beside Tolkien and the other greats both on my bookshelf and in the world of fantasy literature.
As a reader I ended up with a sort of bittersweet feeling after finally finishing the last few pages, wondering what I would have thought if I had read the books when I was 9 or 10, the age they are written to. I expect I wouldn’t have found the same sort of depth, rather just an interesting story. But like many other readers I’ve encountered on the net I probably would have come back to them again and again. I’ve already purchased a hard bound set of the five books for myself and a set as a birthday present for my neice who turns 9 in October.
By the way, thanks, Jared.
