The Dark Is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper

First published: 1984 (includes Over Sea, Under Stone, 1965; The Dark Is Rising, 1973; Greenwitch, 1974; The Grey King, 1975; and Silver on the Tree, 1977)

Type of work: Fantasy

Themes: Coming-of-age and the supernatural

Time of work: The 1970’s

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: England and Wales

Principal Characters:

• Will Stanton, last of the Old Ones, who comes into his power on his eleventh birthday
• Simon Drew, the oldest of the Drew children, inclined to take himself too seriously, but growing into tolerance and responsibility
• Jane Drew, Simon’s sister, intuitive and compassionate
• Barney Drew, the youngest Drew, with the gift of second sight and a passion for stories of King Arthur
• Bran Davies, the adopted son of an ordinary man in modern Wales, but really the son of King Arthur
• Merriman Lyon, kind, bluff, and mysterious, the first of the Old Ones, the Merlin of Arthurian legend
• The Black Rider, cruel, ruthless, and powerful, Merriman’s evil counterpart, the chief representative of the Dark throughout time

The Story

The five books of The Dark Is Rising sequence—Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark Is Rising; Greenwitch; The Grey King; and Silver on the Tree—tell three main stories, which nevertheless converge in a single plot.

The primary story is that of the struggle between good and evil, the Light and the Dark. Though Merriman Lyon is the representative of the Light and a figure of power and authority in this story, it is told largely through the experiences of Will Stanton, the last and youngest of a mysterious Circle of Old Ones which reaches around the world, exists throughout time, and stands in opposition to the equally universal forces of the Dark, principally represented by the Black Rider. Will’s foreordained task, which he begins on his eleventh birthday when he comes into his power as an Old One, is to be the Sign-Seeker, to find the six signs of the Light and two other Things of Power, a golden harp and a crystal sword. Will’s nature and his place in the struggle between the Light and the Dark are introduced in the second book of the sequence, The Dark is Rising. He remains a central part of the plot in the books that follow.

The second story is that of the Drew children—Simon, Jane, and Barney—who, because of their relationship with Merriman Lyon, undertake (in Over Sea, Under Stone) a quest for the grail, a golden cup that holds some of the secrets of the Light and was hidden after the downfall of King Arthur’s realm of Logres. Like the Light’s battle to save the world from the Dark, which the Drews join seemingly by chance, their quest is only partly successful: They find the grail but lose the manuscript it contains, which would have revealed the secret of the grail. The Drew children reenter the plot of the sequence in Greenwitch.

The third story is that of Bran Davies, introduced in The Grey King and of vital importance there and in Silver on the Tree. Bran lives in modern Wales, yet he was born in the time of King Arthur and is, indeed, Arthur’s son, the Pendragon. He was brought as a baby to the twentieth century by his mother, Guinevere, through the power of the Light. As Arthur’s son, Bran is human, not an Old One, yet his ancestry gives him unique power and a special role to play in finishing the battle his great father could not win against the Dark. Bran’s presence in the sequence joins the depths of its mythological pasts to its twentieth century present. Bran mediates as well between the ordinary world of the Drews and the supernatural world of the Old Ones, Merriman and Will.

Context

The Dark Is Rising sequence is Susan Cooper’s best-known fiction. Perhaps because the sequence allows her to develop its themes at greater length, Cooper’s use of the marvelous—the magic of successful fantasy—is more convincing here than in her novel Seaward (1983), whose modern characters also find themselves entangled in otherworldly adventures.

Cooper’s use of Celtic mythology invites comparison with that of three other writers of juvenile literature. Like the sequence The Dark Is Rising, Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series (1963-1968) uses Welsh materials to establish a world of fantasy clearly resembling traditional stories. Unlike Cooper’s fictional world, however, where mythic pasts touch a modern present and imbue it with significance, Alexander’s fantasy remains within its quasi-medieval world, so that only interpretation can link it to a modern reader’s life; also unlike Cooper’s novels, Alexander’s have a strong comic, even farcical, vein running through them.

Perhaps closer to Cooper’s method of mythologizing the present—certainly closer to her seriousness—are works such as those of Nancy Bond, especially A String in the Harp (1976), which uses the poet Taliesin as a central figure whose mythic life touches the modern lives of main characters. Alan Garner has also used traditional Celtic stories in ways akin to Cooper’s use; in The Owl Service (1967), for example, Garner’s modern characters, by their presence in a certain Welsh valley, become involved in one of the tragic stories of ancient Wales.

Cooper’s sequence The Dark Is Rising, then, invites comparison with other juvenile fantasy, yet it stands somehow alone. Its explicit wedding of Arthurian and other more emphatically Celtic stories with the universal theme of the Light’s struggles against the Dark is mediated through characters who, because of their youth and apparent ordinariness, allow the reader to identify with them; that identification becomes participation in high fantasy, a vehicle for extraordinary adventure and delight.