Hey Blog! It’s the first post of 2023 – I hope you’ve had a great year so far and that the future will hold just as wonderful surprises. It’s Twelfth Night tonight, the last of the twelve days of Christmas and (in the past) the climax of the Christmas celebrations. This is a very important date in the calendar of one particular book that I got for Christmas: by Susan Cooper, it’s The Dark is Rising.
The Dark is Rising is the second book in a five-book sequence, which takes its name from this book, and covers the first quest of the then-11-year-old ‘Old One’ Will Stanton. It starts on Midwinter’s Eve, the eve of Will’s 11th birthday, when everything seems to be behaving a bit funny towards him. The radio, the birds, the family pets… Then, the farmer down the lane gives Will a circle of iron, quartered by a cross, and tells him to guard it. Next morning, when he wakes up, his world shifts, and he appears a few centuries back in his past. Going to a smithy standing near where the farm would stand in his own time, he encounters two mysterious figures – a black horse and black rider, who is very suspect; and a shabby old terrified man called the Walker. He is also introduced to a white horse, who is shoed with strangely shaped horseshoes – the quartered circle. This sign seems to be everywhere…
Eventually, he finds a pair of doors, which seem to materialise in front of him. These take him into a room with a fire and a candle stand, the latter of which has just one candle missing from the circle. The two people sitting near it, Merriman Lyon and an enigmatic woman known as The Lady, then reveal to him he is not an ordinary human boy – he is the last of the Old Ones, a group of immortal magicians, who can flow across and through time and are duty-bound to defend the Light. Will, as the last of them, completes the circle, and inherits the position of Sign-Seeker. This charges him to find the six Signs, Iron (he’s already got it), Bronze, Wood, Stone, Fire, and Water. Then, he has to keep them safe from the Dark (hence the name of the book) until they can be joined, at which point the circle of the Old Ones will be complete and the second of the four Things of Power will be safe and found.
Does he complete the quest? You’ll have to read the book (I say this every time…) but I can say that it has a very good ending on Twelfth Night “That which was once Christmas Day and once, long ago before that, was the high winter festival of our old year” when the Wild Hunt rides, and as Merriman says, “Nothing may outface the Wild Hunt”. All through the story run themes of ancient magic, love, desperation, and over all, a desire for goodness and freedom: exactly what the Light represents. I think that the structure of the story follows a similar pattern to The Box of Delights, and the magic in it seems to be a collaboration between Doctor Who and A Wizard of Earthsea. Underpinning it all is the fabric of ancient British mythology.
The setting is constantly changing as a result of the changing time that the Old Ones experience, but there’s a love for the land and a LOT of snow. As for originality it has got to be one of the best: all books reference to others, but to make something original you weave them together in a totally new way and add threads of your own: that’s originality. It’s definitely in the top set of books I’ve read for quite a while, bringing together time, folklore, and a touch of ancient magic!