The Dark is Rising sequence

I certainly found the Dark Is Rising sequence utterly haunting (especially the latter ones) when I read them, and often think back to them- its the way they place the fantastic inside the real world, the way it creeps in and sits beside is almost like Lynch for kids. The one set in Wales (can't remember the name) really sticks in my mind...

I had completely forgotten about these books but when I was little I LOVED them. I think that along with E Nesbitt they were some of the most magical books I read as a child. I do remember being very frustrated at the ending though...do they all lose their memories or something? I'm sure something happened that seemed to negate everything that had gone before anyway.
I did read the Phillip Pullman books a year or two ago (as an adult or as near as I'm ever going to be) and I thought that they were extremely good. Obviously it will never have the same resonance for me as the Dark is Rising - just because of my age, environment etc - but I was very impressed.

gek-opel said:

I certainly found the Dark Is Rising sequence utterly haunting (especially the latter ones) when I read them, and often think back to them- its the way they place the fantastic inside the real world, the way it creeps in and sits beside is almost like Lynch for kids. The one set in Wales (can't remember the name) really sticks in my mind...

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You're thinking of The Grey King - the penultimate one in the sequence.

Yeah, like you guys I loved these books as a child (I hadn't heard of them until my eldest brother gave me all five in a boxed set as a Xmas present) and in later life I found myself returning to them continually (not anymore - I think I've probably exhausted every last pleasure to be drained from exhaustive re-reading). There is something extremely haunting about them, although I can remember reading the last one and feeling, like IdleRich, completely let down and so I hardly ever bothered re-reading that one. I think you're right about how they succeed by weaving the magical and the day-to-day together which is quite what the 'real' world is like to a child (or how you'd like to imagine/hope it being). Susan Cooper really understood (in Bettleheim's term) the uses of enchantment...

Can't comment on Philip Pullman though as I haven't read him yet. I'd be disappointed, given the hype around him and his work, if he wasn't at least as good as Cooper...

Its all about the grey King, and the earlier one with Will (is it?) and the evil thing from the dark with an owls face (again ? many years have passed). Hauntological children's books. The way they engage with British mythos and sense of place, home and unhome, chilling and brilliant. I have obviously erased the last one from my memory....

gek-opel said:

Its all about the grey King, and the earlier one with Will (is it?) and the evil thing from the dark with an owls face (again ? many years have passed). Hauntological children's books. The way they engage with British mythos and sense of place, home and unhome, chilling and brilliant. I have obviously erased the last one from my memory....

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Actually, the thing with Owl's face isn't evil. Isn't it some carnival mask he gets sent as birthday/xmas present from his elder brother which has an owl's eyes (mabye face) and a set of antlers - and which, after it floats away from his house in a flood, is taken by Herne the Hunter (actually, it's the head of Herne the Hunter) who then routs the forces of the dark?

Christ, it does have real power that second book - I can still vividly remember reading it for the first time, just after Xmas, and it bringing me out in goosebumps because it was so chilling and magical. If anything, I thought the Arthurian elements kinda got in the way of the other, darker, profounder pre-Christian vestiges of ritual and legend that the books evoke.

Weirdly, discussing it now has made me want to read it again...

mind_philip said:

It's the evocation of the pre-Christian heritage of England being something you could almost slip into, as if it was separated by nothing more substantial than the loss of focus when you cross your eyes, that really gives these books their lingering power in my imagination.

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YES!
I am a right one for giving books away after I have read them, gonna go and look in the cupboard for these with my fingers crossed.

Our teacher read the first one to us at school when I was 7 or 8.