Now if you’re gonna get technical about it, this isn’t the first book in The Dark Is Rising sequence. Not only did she recreate the setting, Buckinghamshire, England, where she grew up, from a distance, but the ice and cold that permeate the book emerged while she sat in her bathing suit, with her back to the Caribbean Sea, a small lizard standing on her typewriter.” So she turned to the folklore, fairy tale, and myth of her childhood, notably Arthurian legend, for the material in The Dark Is Rising. He must find the six great Signs before the Dark can rise, for an epic battle between good and evil approaches.”Īnita Silvey says in 100 Best Books for Children that the story came when Susan Cooper lived in America and “found herself homesick for Britain. But the Dark has sent out the Rider: evil cloaked in black, mounted upon a midnight stallion, and on the hunt for this youngest Old One, Will. Six medallions - iron, bronze, wood, water, fire, and stone - created and hidden by the Old Ones centuries ago. At once Will is plunged into a quest to find six magical Signs to aid the powers of the Light.

Bemused and terrified, he finds he is the last of the Old Ones, magical men and women sworn to protect the world from the source of evil, the Dark. The plot from the publisher reads, “When Will Stanton wakes up on the morning of his birthday, he discovers an unbelievable gift - he is immortal. My favorite book to reread at Christmastime.

Sure, it’s long, and it’s very, well, 1970s, but the language is gorgeous, and you can’t top the Arthurian-inspired sweeping story. #22 The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper (1973)

The dark is rising sequence books