Young Man Saves the World ... Again

I don't normally post other people's reviews, but I'll make the exception as it's The Dark is Rising by SUSAN COOPER. Also, links to the Star's website go unclickable after a bit and I'm too stupid to fix that ....

P.S The Dark is Rising Sequence is now available in a number of new editions, including a hardback omnibus with a rather nice navy blue cover and silver lettering, but rather tatty paper. I plan to get the box-set (as my softback Puffin omnibus is coming apart at the seams), which features not-too-tacky illustrations. Sorry, but the look of a book is quite important to me as an ugly cover might prove too distracting and distressing. When there's no hope for it, brown paper, or a page out of a magazine, does the trick.

Tale of old magic

Review by AHNAF

A movie adaptation introduces a 19-year-old reviewer to a classic fantasy novel written in the 1970s and reissued to a new generation of appreciative readers.

THE DARK IS RISING
By Susan Cooper
Publisher: Puffin Books, 272 pages
(ISBN: 978-0141323558)

MEET Will Stanton, who wakes up on one snowy birthday to find he’s travelled back in time 500 years.

You see, Will isn’t your average 11-year-old; he’s the last of the Old Ones, champions of the Light, dedicated to driving back the Dark. It’s like having multiple personality disorder, only with very, very cool magic powers – like time-travelling.

And he needs those powers too, since his secret identity comes with a mission: finding and guarding the six Signs of Light, because – you guessed it – the Dark is rising. And it’s not just because the Earth spins on a tilted axis, either; this time, the Dark intends to stay. 

Okay, so if an 11-year-old boy with magic powers and “destiny” stamped (figuratively) on his forehead sounds distressingly familiar, relax – author Susan Cooper wrote this in the 1970s, and has a very different style from one J.K. Rowling.

For starters, the book’s a lot more grim; it’s the heart of winter, the shadows are long, and Will doesn’t have spunky wizardly friends to distract him with witty jokes or hormonal tension. He’s on his own, with only the other really old Old Ones to back him up.

But there’s also something very dreamlike about all this seriousness. Cooper builds a sort of prickly, uneasy tension by mixing the mundane with the magical, which can make things a little unreal.

Will is, for example, along with being an Old One with cosmic responsibilities, also the youngest of nine kids on the brink of Christmas, so we get to see him opening presents and going caroling in between time-hopping and sign-seeking.

The tension between familiar and unfamiliar, real and unreal, constantly loops around the line of action, and while Cooper’s subtle writing style never left me gasping for breath, I was always aware of the noose she made – and that it was tightening. Because the story does get faster, and eerier, and in the end all that tension climaxes when she allows the dream to bleed over into reality, congealing into nightmare. Which is basically a fancy way of saying that Cooper rocks my socks.

In case you think I’m going soft, however, I’ll nitpick: her approach does mean that the characters aren’t very realistic; in fact, they’re symbols more than anything else. I couldn’t really tell the difference between Will’s siblings or his parents, and they’re such stock English family characters I felt like slapping them into the 21st century. So don't look for in-depth psychological realism in the characters’ speech and relationships. 

Cooper’s strength lies in the way she patterns and contrasts everything, and you can feel her Oxford English Lit mind buzzing away behind the scenes as she delicately structures dualities like Will and his opposite on the Dark side, Hawkin; Will's Old One mentor Merriman and the Rider, and so on.

Her biggest plus for me, though, is her magic. You can always tell when fantasy writers don't know their stuff by the way magic works in their novels, and anyone who writes things like “she muttered a spell under her breath” or “he made a few mystical gestures” gets a big fat FAIL.

Cooper aces this test. Even though she has a few silly rhyming prophecies here and there (what is it with fantasy writers and bad poetry?), the book’s filled with references to Celtic crosses, Arthurian allusions, echoes of Druidic solstice rituals, and other bits of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic folklore that make up British magic. 

It’s an old, old kind of magic, not of wands and words but of snow and summer, and very rooted in local traditions. Maybe too local for some people; even I found it a little strange at one point reading about winter weather on the eve of Hari Raya here on the Equator. 

But I kept reading, and I think most people will, too. I don’t understand why people make a distinction between children’s fantasy and adults’ fantasy (I suppose the latter allows the clothes to come off, which says a lot about what’s important to adults) – it’s either good fantasy or it isn’t. The Dark is Rising most definitely is ... and I can’t wait to catch the movie!

The movie, by the way, is entitled The Seeker: The Dark is Rising Sequence. “Sequence” refers to the fact that The Dark is Rising is actually the second title in a series of five. The first is Over Sea, Under Stone; following The Dark is Rising is Greenwitch, The Grey King and Silver on the Tree. But, not to worry, The Dark is Rising can be read entirely on its own. So go get it. Now.

Comments

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[eyeris]

the review is sound, the book is awesome.

But I wish I'd done the review myself because then I could tell everyone NTO to waste their money on the movie ticket, and go buy the book instead.
It's so bad that Susan Cooper should DEMAND that the words 'Now A Major Potion Picture' be taken off the covers of her books...

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I seldom enjoy fantasy stories..... but I am currently reading A Song Of Ice And Fire by George R.R. Martin. It is fantastic.