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Review - The Dark Is Rising
Dec. 10th, 2008 01:18 pmI suspect that the books of this sequence are among the most beautiful I've read. I get that feeling especially with this book. The tone here has changed already from the Blyton-esque kids-on-a-great-adventure of the first book, and the character is different accordingly. It's almost a bildungsroman, for all that we only see less than a month of an eleven year old boy's life.
One of the main things I love about this sequence, particularly from this book on, is the characterisation. Where Simon, Jane and Barney were simplistic but also realistic in the first book, Will is now much more layered. Literally. There's a part of him that's a boy, and there's a part of him that's ancient and ageless, and in this book he's got to learn to balance the two, use the two, keep them separate where he can. In my opinion, this is beautifully done. One minute he's standing with the Lady and Merriman, fighting back the dark -- the next, boy like, he's making mistakes through over-enthusiasm. At first he cannot accept that he's not just an ordinary boy, and then he's playing tricks with his new-found powers. At the end, he acknowledges that sometimes he wishes he could just be an ordinary boy, but not always.
It's not just Will, though. Despite it being a short book, you catch glimpses of so many characters who are worth thinking about, and yet Susan Cooper never loses focus either. The Stanton family are particularly well-drawn, in my opinion. There's so many of them that you can't get a fully-rounded picture of any of them, but you still feel as if maybe you've been to tea with them a couple of times -- or I do, anyway. I feel like I'd like to date Paul, I'd want to hit Mary, I'd antagonise James, I'd... It's wonderful how Susan Cooper shows us so many characters and makes us care about them, so briefly and succinctly.
The writing, of course, I think is lovely. I whisper it aloud to myself. There are some beautiful images and scenes -- the Doors, for example, and the appearance of the ship, the signs... I love the way Susan Cooper writes.
I've read reviews where people felt that nothing happened in these books. I find that hard to understand -- there's moments of real brooding menace, real magic, but I think people who are expecting swordfights and high fantasy in that sense are going to be disappointed. Ultimately, the sequence concludes that the battle against the Dark is fought in men's hearts. That, in some ways, is not a "satisfying" conclusion -- yet it's a realistic one, and that's something I like.
One of the main things I love about this sequence, particularly from this book on, is the characterisation. Where Simon, Jane and Barney were simplistic but also realistic in the first book, Will is now much more layered. Literally. There's a part of him that's a boy, and there's a part of him that's ancient and ageless, and in this book he's got to learn to balance the two, use the two, keep them separate where he can. In my opinion, this is beautifully done. One minute he's standing with the Lady and Merriman, fighting back the dark -- the next, boy like, he's making mistakes through over-enthusiasm. At first he cannot accept that he's not just an ordinary boy, and then he's playing tricks with his new-found powers. At the end, he acknowledges that sometimes he wishes he could just be an ordinary boy, but not always.
It's not just Will, though. Despite it being a short book, you catch glimpses of so many characters who are worth thinking about, and yet Susan Cooper never loses focus either. The Stanton family are particularly well-drawn, in my opinion. There's so many of them that you can't get a fully-rounded picture of any of them, but you still feel as if maybe you've been to tea with them a couple of times -- or I do, anyway. I feel like I'd like to date Paul, I'd want to hit Mary, I'd antagonise James, I'd... It's wonderful how Susan Cooper shows us so many characters and makes us care about them, so briefly and succinctly.
The writing, of course, I think is lovely. I whisper it aloud to myself. There are some beautiful images and scenes -- the Doors, for example, and the appearance of the ship, the signs... I love the way Susan Cooper writes.
I've read reviews where people felt that nothing happened in these books. I find that hard to understand -- there's moments of real brooding menace, real magic, but I think people who are expecting swordfights and high fantasy in that sense are going to be disappointed. Ultimately, the sequence concludes that the battle against the Dark is fought in men's hearts. That, in some ways, is not a "satisfying" conclusion -- yet it's a realistic one, and that's something I like.
