I didn't specifically aim to review 'The Dark is Rising' in December, but it turned out to be a perfect choice for the winter months, or as close to it as we get in Arizona, given that much of it takes place in the snow. I might not relish the idea of walking through drifts in my current leather boots but I still miss the snow and this was a welcome reminder of home. I grew up in Essex, not far east of the locations here, and I was born just before its publication, in 1973. That makes it fifty years old and right at the boundary I set for my glimpse into classic children's genre fiction.

I should point out that, while it's part of a broader series that's also called 'The Dark is Rising', it wasn't the book that began it. That was 'Over Sea, Under Stone', published in 1965, but it isn't as important to read that before this as both of them before the rest. There are five in total. The first is set in Cornwall in the far southwest of England and introduces the three Drew children; this is set in the Thames Valley around London and it introduces Will Stanton. That's because, while Susan Cooper didn't know she was going to write a series when she wrote the first book, she did at this point and this is Will's origin story before he joins the Drew family in Cornwall for 'Greenwitch'. The series continues in 'The Grey King' and ends with 'Silver on the Tree', the final four books published close together, from 1973 to 1977.

Will is about to celebrate a birthday as this novel begins, the primary reason we focus on him rather than the many other members of the Stanton household. It's 20th December, or Midwinter's Eve. Tomorrow, he'll turn eleven on the Solstice, and his world will change. He wants snow, he tells his family, blissfully unaware that he is about to be inducted into an ages-old battle between the Light and the Dark. You see, he's the seventh son of a seventh son, which has meaning in the folklore of many European nations, including Britain, and it explains to us that he has a destiny to live up to and magical gifts to use while doing so. As the title suggests, the Dark is Rising and he must learn what needs to be learned from those who know so that he can play his part in the battle.

To sidetrack once more, I should add that this may sound rather familiar to most kids in 2023, not to mention a large proportion of adults. An eleven–year-old boy is taught by experienced authority figures, not least a tall white man with wild white hair, to use magic to fight the powers of darkness, as epitomised by one dark lord who manifests in myriad forms? Why, that's the story of Harry Potter, you might cry, and you'd be right. That's one of many reasons why the American feature film adaptation in 2007 called 'The Seeker' or 'The Seeker: The Dark is Rising', failed miserably, to the degree that pretty much anyone who appreciates the book series, the author included, absolutely despise it.

There are differences though, beyond this almost a quarter of a century older. The primary ones are that Will has a family, a real one, too; who aren't merely housing an orphan for the benefits. This is never a school story, even when Will is learning all he can from the Book of Gramarye; and it has a real grounding in the mythology of the British Isles. That white man with wild white hair isn't Professor Dumbledore; he's Merlin the Magician, merely going by Merriman Lyon in 1973. Herne the Hunter also makes an appearance, leading the Wild Hunt. Another difference is the tone, which here is unease rather than oppression.

Unease is everywhere in the early chapters. Will is a good kid who cares both for and about animals, but they suddenly don't like him as his birthday approaches: rooks swoop at him, rabbits cower and dogs snarl. He has no idea what's going on, having been given zero preparation for what's to come, but there are people who do know something and this is when they start to talk to him. Will and his brother James visit Dawson's Farm, as they so often have, to buy hay, and mention that a tramp was watching them, Mr. Dawson points out that "the Walker is abroad". He also gives Will an iron ring, with a particular image on it, a circle quartered by a cross, and explains that he should both keep it with him at all times and tell nobody about it. On their return home, the same tramp runs from this eleven-year-old in horror.

Will knows both that something is horribly wrong and that he can do absolutely nothing about it, which is not the best way to turn eleven. No wonder he has nightmares and then wakes in the morning to find himself back in time. His family are still there, though he can't wake any of them, so he wanders around. It's here that he's attacked by the Black Rider, who knows exactly who he is, though he's saved by John Smith, a blacksmith who shows him a white horse. He later meets the tramp, who he now knows is the Walker, but their conversation is interrupted by the Black Rider attacking him again, at which point he's saved by the white horse, which takes him to a pair of huge doors in a road, which he walks through.

In the impossible hall behind the doors, he meets Merriman Lyon and the Lady, both Old Ones or servants of the Light, who wield the power of magic. What's more, Will is an Old One too, only now coming into his power as he turns eleven. Merriman starts to teach him about telepathy and telekinesis, not to mention time travel, which is an inherent ability of Old Ones, and that his quest is to find the Six Signs of the Light, which he needs to protect and bring together at this crucial time. The Dark is rising and the six signs are needed to defeat it. That's not a lot of pressure to load onto an eleven-year-old kid who didn't know anything about this yesterday, right? Well, such are the breaks when you're the seventh son of a seventh son.

I liked this book a great deal, but that was my biggest problem with it. Of course, the eternal battle between the forces of Light and Darkness is a big deal. It's the biggest deal there is. But, if one eleven-year-old boy will play the pivotal role at the most crucial time, then maybe it might be an idea to prepare him in some fashion, so that he's not just thrown into it on his birthday. So many of these scenes involve Will finding a way to do the thing that must be done without having much clue about what he's doing or why. "Preparation, preparation, preparation!" should be an easy mantra to live up to when you're effectively immortal and able to quickly and easily travel through time. But hey, what do I know? I'm only the first son of a first son.

To be fair, everything is very local, suggesting that a support system has been carefully put into place over the past decades in order to help Will out at his appointed time. It's just that none of them actually do that until he turns eleven, at which point he's immediately required to be deployable to the battle. Given that this has such depth in Arthurian legend and other British mythology, I'm keen to see how Will gets along in Cornwall in the third book. He travels a lot in time here, but not a lot in physical distance, so his experience of different culture is rather unlike most.

Another thing that fascinated me here was how this story, written as a sort of folk horror/fantasy for children half a century ago, feels like it's connected to so much else. As a timeless story about a timeless battle, it has to end up feeling somewhat, well, timeless, but the cultural references back that up. There are those 'Harry Potter' connections, of course, but the use of magic here also feels very much like the use of superpowers, so it isn't hard to imagine that Will Stanton is a superhero fighting for the powers of Light. It's all very modern.

On the other hand, this is Light versus Dark at the highest level, so raising a religious connotation that's not modern in the slightest. Jesus isn't here, but Will isn't unlike him in that he inherited his particularly powers with the requirement that he must use them for Light in a story much bigger than him. Cooper prefers to see this in terms of mythology, never quite suggesting that Christianity is just another myth but giving much the same effect. It could be suggested that Jesus could be yet another Old One, which is a weird sentence indeed for a Lovecraft fan to write. It's not used in the same sense, but there's definitely Lovecraft here in the Book of Gramarye, the oldest book in the world, which can only be read by Old Ones in Old Speech.

And it feels connected to so many of the books that I've read recently as part of my runthrough of children's classic genre fiction. There are a lot of similarities to 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen', especially given that underpinning in Arthurian legend, but this is less overtly fantasy; there are no goblins here. The Dark has a similarity to the Dark in 'A Wrinkle in Time' too, but it's direct here, so the most obvious similarity is the lack of a quality movie version, even though I could argue for the three Mrs. Ws being Old Ones too and wrinkling being. What this is telling me is that, far from being a bundle of utterly independent titles that only share a genre and an age, the authors who wrote them were working the same ground. I look forward to more. ~~ Hal C F Astell