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The Dark is Rising

Book Synopsis

Enter the young adult world of Susan Cooper. Perfect for fans of His Dark Materials .

It’s Christmas-time in the Stanton family house: presents, carol singing, good cheer. But for eleven-year-old Will Stanton, something sinister has begun, inching round his subconscious, shouting silent warnings he can’t decipher. Then on Midwinter Day, Will wakes up to a different world: silent, covered in snow and ancient forest, a world of another time. A world where evil lurks.

Because Will is not the ordinary boy he always thought he was. He is the last of the Old Ones and the power to vanquish the evil magic of the Dark lies within him.

Includes exclusive material: In the Backstory you can read an interview with the author and discover the ancient beliefs that inspired the story.

Our Review Panel says...

This book was instrumental for me, too – a frankly terrifying story of a boy being pulled into an ancient, mythic battle fought in the land right before us, which we cannot see but whose outcome affects us enormously. The way Cooper summons up the sense of being outside on a winter day is just perfect: special and liberating and sinister and silent all at once. The figure of The Black Rider was a huge inspiration for the character of The Midwinter King in The Midnight Guardians – in the first draft, Col was pursued not by the Lord of all Darkness, but by a sort of bounty hunter figure.