Review - The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper

Short review: Will Stanton is one of the Old Ones who stands against the darkness. The trouble is, he is only eleven years old.

Haiku
Four Things of Power
Must be found to aid the Light
By a seventh son

Full review: The Dark Is Rising is the second book in Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence. In this book, the series moves away from the Drew children who had been featured in Over Sea, Under Stone, and introduces Will Stanton, an eleven year old boy just discovering that he has supernatural powers, and a burden to take up an age-old fight on the side of Light against the Dark.

The story is a combination coming-of-age story, as Stanton adjusts to his new status, new powers, and the new threats to his safety (and the safety of those around him), and a quest story, as Stanton is sent to recover pieces of a powerful artifact that the Light needs to combat a new threat from the Dark. The book is loaded with references to English folklore and Arthurian myth, and part of the fun of reading the story as an adult is seeing how many of these you can spot.

The Dark Is Rising is a superlative young adult book, which, I suspect, is why it was recognized with a Newbery Honor, and why it has endured for more than thirty years while many other young adult books published contemporaneously have been cast into the dustbin of obscurity. The book suffers from a problem I have found common in young adult fiction in that the adult characters seem to be stiff and uninteresting, while the younger characters are well developed and shine, but the story still flows well enough that this can be overlooked without too much trouble.

The story of this book is, to a great extent, the central story of the entire series of books, and, like all of the books in Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series, it is quite good.

Previous book in the series: Over Sea, Under Stone
Subsequent book in the series: Greenwitch

1974 Mythopoeic Award Nominees

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Review - The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander

Short review: Arawn has a cauldron that can bring the dead back to life to serve as his soldiers. Taran and his friends have to find a way to take it away from him, even as their own allies betray their cause.

Haiku
Deathless cauldron born
To destroy the black cauldron
One hero must die

Full review: In the second book of the Chronicles of Prydain, Taran sets out for adventure once more, slightly more prepared than he was in The Book of Three. He is once more accompanied by Gurgi, Fflewddur and Eilonwy, and the whole group is led by Gwydion. Some new characters are introduced: the chief bard Aadon, the cunning King Morgant, the jovial ham-handed King Smoit,  and the egotistical prince Ellidyr.

Gwydion has learned that since the Horned King was killed Arawn has been using the magical device known as the Black Cauldron to produce more and more of the deathless cauldron-born warriors. The plot of the novel revolved around the heroes' attempts to recover and destroy the object, preventing Arawn from increasing his army. It turns out that the cauldron has been stolen from Arawn already, but eventually Taran locates it, and bargains with its new owners to obtain it. After various betrayals and deaths, the cauldron is destroyed, but at a significant cost.

For a book aimed at young adults, the book is quite somber. Several notable characters die, characters one thought would be allies turn out not to be, Taran is forced to give up something very valuable, and the Cauldron itself can only be destroyed if someone willingly gets in it while still alive, which will kill them (which draws directly upon the original Welsh legend the cauldron is based upon). Unlike the crappy Disney hack-job movie in which Gurgi came back to life after destroying the cauldron, in the book, the death is irrevocable. While The Book of Three was more of a romp, this book seems to up the ante, showing that defeating Arawn will be neither easy nor painless.

Previous book in the series: The Book of Three
Subsequent book in the series: The Castle of Llyr

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