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    The Dark Is Rising: The Dark is Rising Sequence #2
    Unavailable
    The Dark Is Rising: The Dark is Rising Sequence #2
    Unavailable
    The Dark Is Rising: The Dark is Rising Sequence #2
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Dark Is Rising: The Dark is Rising Sequence #2

    Written by Susan Cooper

    Narrated by Alex Jennings

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    On the Midwinter Day that is his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton discovers a special gift--he is the last of the Old Ones, immortals dedicated to keeping the world from dominations by the forces of evil, the Dark. At once, he is plunged into a quest for the six magical Signs that will one day and the Old Ones in the final battle between the Dark and the Light. And for the twelve days of Christmas, while the Dark is rising, life for Will is fill of wonder, terror, and delight.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 11, 2005
    ISBN9780307281784
    Unavailable
    The Dark Is Rising: The Dark is Rising Sequence #2
    Author

    Susan Cooper

    Susan Cooper is one of our foremost fantasy authors; her classic five-book fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising has sold millions of copies worldwide. Her books’ accolades include the Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and five shortlists for the Carnegie Medal. She combines fantasy with history in Victory (a Washington Post Top Ten Books for Children pick), King of Shadows, Ghost Hawk, and her magical The Boggart and the Monster, second in a trilogy, which won the Scottish Arts Council’s Children’s Book Award. Susan Cooper lives on a saltmarsh island in Massachusetts, and you can visit her online at TheLostLand.com.

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    Reviews for The Dark Is Rising

    4/5

    1,829 ratings125 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      On Will Stanton's eleventh birthday he discovers he is an important figure in the coming battle against the Dark. The second of the Dark is Rising Sequence.
    • 4/5
      On Will Stanton's eleventh birthday he discovers he is an important figure in the coming battle against the Dark. The second of the Dark is Rising Sequence.
    • 3/5
      Much younger me would have loved this series. Old cynical me still enjoys it :)
    • 4/5
      A classic fantasy read.
    • 4/5
      This is a well-known and highly regarded children's fantasy series involving a supernatural threat to modern Britain. The setting (in this case rural Buckinghamshire) is vividly real, and so is the menace. The hero, Will, discovers he is the last of the Old Ones, a group who defend Britain from this rising threat, and he is searching over the Twelve Days of Christmas for signs that will help him. The overall "feel" of the stories is very like Garner's Brisingamen books. I like this one and The Grey King; I am less fond of others in the series, notably Greenwitch.
    • 4/5
      Twitter was rereading this for Christmas, and it had been decades since I last did, so I headed to the library catalogue and, since every copy across town was on loan, borrowed the audiobook instead. I'm not very good with audiobooks usually, but kept myself busy enough with quiet-enough craft-things that I could hear all the way through, only zoned out the once, and didn't get *too* annoyed at how the narrator kept doing Voices for the female characters, especially silly-sounding Mary and breathy-Old Lady.The story was just as I remembered it, from the snow through to the Thaw; the creepiness of the rooks, and of the Dark Rider plucking the hair from Mary's coat.Just as when I was a child I still feel Hawkins got the wrong end of the deal. Now I particularly feel that any power that uses someone without *ensuring* full and informed consent has no business calling itself the "Light". Merriman at least does recognise he made a mistake but makes no attempt at apology let alone reparation for the fact. Instead he goes on blaming and punishing Hawkins for not choosing to return to them, and only gives him rest when he finally does. I will not be reconciled to any of this!I think I can finally visualise though how the Signs worked as extra belt buckles. This always bothered me, as a child....
    • 5/5
      This series was an important part of my young adulthood, and forms at least part of the foundation of my love of fantasy novels, and probably reading in general. They're a touch dated now, but the story moves well and the characters are easy to engage with. Among my favorites of all time.
    • 5/5
      Well-written, enthralling read, has a very plausible storyline. Best suited for the older teenager and it's a fun read for adults. The plot is quite intricate and refers heavily to Arthurian legend. Liked Will Stanton and his family. I found Merriman at bit high-handed and wondered why Cooper developed him that way.
    • 4/5
      I don't know how I'd managed to not read this series at some point before this, but I finally picked this one up just after Christmas. As the book is set around Christmas time, it was a timely discovery, and the English countryside setting was simultaneously familiar and unsettling. I look forward to reading the other books in the series.
    • 4/5
      This is a solid, suspenseful follow-up to the first in the series/sequence. It doesn't relate directly to Over Sea, Under Stone, but there are echoes that lead one to think that the stories will meet up in later books (well, the echoes and the reviews I've read). My kids are loving this series, which is a little surprising given how scary it is. But they like quests and children taking on responsibility beyond their years, and maybe the scary bits enhance those themes.This one seems darker than the first book. The atmosphere of this one is similar to Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, although I wonder if that might be because I listened to both on audio and the narrators' voices and accents are somewhat similar.On to Book #3!
    • 5/5
      I don't remember how old I was when I first read the Dark is Rising Cycle, probably elementary school. This was my favorite story of the five.The story is well told. Cooper does a good job of introducing the readers to the mythology of her world without making it sound like an infodump. She also does a good job with making Will sound at times much older than his years and at other times acting like any 11 year old boy.The story also has some shades of gray for those on the Light side, but the dark seems to be pure evil. It's too bad, I think it could have been more interesting if both the Light and the Dark were complex and more than just "good" and "evil."Years later I still vividly remember some of the images from the story.I've seen a preview for the movie and I'm worried about the adaptation.
    • 5/5
      This is a truly wonderful work of fantasy. Will Stanton, a seventh son of a seventh son, discovers that he is an "Old One" on his eleventh birthday, a midwinter day in 1970's England. A nearly perfect Christmas read.
    • 4/5
      I was surprised by this book and its dreamlike wanderings. At points I found myself re-reading without realizing I'd already gone through a page or two the night before, and that drowsy dreamlike sense of the writing was a real appeal.
    • 2/5
      This felt like a low-detail story about an old, sacred mythology, which is great, except it also needs characters with agency, and maybe a plot. Will has no agency--things happen to him and the world around him, and occasionally he knows what to do because Old Ones have Knowledge, but there's no decision making in order to address obstacles. Similarly, the plot feels preordained. It has no agency in its shaping. This is just How Things Go in the old story.

      I recall liking it as a kid, but never being super into it. That's sort of how I feel now, but I like it less.
    • 5/5
      The Dark is Rising (The Dark Is Rising #2) by Susan Cooper is a great fantasy book for middle grade kids. I didn't read the first book but I didn't have any trouble picking up from the first page. It had slight suspense, mystery, magic, adventure, and intrigue. It also captured the middle grade attitude/life style perfectly. Great job.
    • 4/5
      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, part of the fun of reading the book as an adult is seeing how many of these you can spot.Even though this is technically a young adult book, it is still quite good. It is written better than many other young adult books, which, I suspect, is why it won the Newbery Award and has endured for more than thirty years and 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 The Dark Is Rising series, it is quite good.
    • 1/5
      A novel of predestination. Everything is laid out on an excruciatingly contrived path that can only go one particular way, and our hero obligingly trots right through it. Furthermore, the good guys can be distinguished from the bad guys pretty much only in that the main character instinctively feels their respective goodness and badness, rather than by anything they actually do in this book. Why this is considered a classic is utterly beyond me.
    • 3/5
      Ooh, mysterious finish and good lead-in if I were to read other books in the series. It was good, but I think I'm going to have to leave these be. It wasn't interesting enough.
    • 3/5
      Salesman caught up in mafia
    • 3/5
      This was one of the December book club recommendations by Gretchen Rubin and is also one of my sister-in-law's favorite books. It came highly recommended by several people so I was looking forward to reading it. But, I just could not get into it.
    • 5/5
      This is literally my favorite fantasy book in the entire world.
    • 4/5
      On the eve of his eleventh birthday--a Midwinter's Eve Birthday, Wil, the seventh son of the seventh son, is given a token (a sign) to keep with him. Will comes to discover that he is the last of the Old Ones, a group of "warriors" dedicated to fighting the forces of the Dark. Will must seek the other signs, as he shifts from time period to time period and encounters more of the Old Ones, and unite them for the Dark is rising. Unless Will can learn his powers, grow with them, and develop some mastery over them to locate the other signs and unite them, the world will slip into Darkness. The fate of the world rests with Will, an eleven year old boy.

      Overall, I enjoyed the book. Cooper does a great job of personifying the Dark as an evil Rider out to undermine Will's efforts to seek the signs and unite them. And Cooper's narrative style and voice make this a pleasurable read as she bring characters--Will's somewhat absent-minded father, a jeweler, Will's mother, a practical and loving farm wife and mother of quite a brood of children--seven, and a vast array of characters who may be Old Ones who help Will in his journey.
    • 5/5
      Susan Cooper's 1973 novel is pretty much the last word in the Second Golden Age of British Fantasy. It's one of those books that just can't be denied, rather like a force of nature. And it's not hard to pinpoint why: there's a legacy to Cooper's work that runs pretty deep, not just in the ancient British mythology she invokes (like so many of her peers) but in the actual structure of her story. The inexorable (one of her favorite words) approach of "the Dark is rising" owes a lot to "the wolves are running" in John Masefield's The Box of Delights, for instance, and Cooper's book can be seen as a modernized and, well, darker version of the same basic tale. Cooper's prose, both narrative and dialogue, is some of the most relentlessly somber and articulate I've ever read in a "children's book" - far more than that she employed in Over Sea, Under Stone, this book's predecessor. In a lesser writer's hand it might sound pretentious, but here it comes over as a sort of elevated speech that helps to communicate both the importance and the timelessness of the conflict between Light and Dark. It even makes the book feel more urgent, if that's possible. Another benefit of Cooper's straightforward writing is that it avoids the trap of some of her peers, such as Alan Garner, who can get so wrapped up in atmospheric images the meaning of the story becomes lost to the reader. Cooper loves her iconography, but she always favors the clarity of the writing - which is interesting, because it allows her to actually skip or breeze over a few logical connections without the reader really noticing. Characters just know things in this novel, and you accept it readily. There is one revelation that, both times I've read the book, I feel she simply jumps to overly quickly; it's in the "betrayal" chapter. I can gloss over one small story point, however, as the rest of the book is very carefully forged.Of course, The Dark is Rising is the second in a five-book sequence, and for many readers (myself included), it's actually the first one you read. Pleasantly, it stands just fine as a novel on its own, and you don't "need" to go on. It's hard not to want to, though. Cooper has devised a very engrossing combination of low fantasy setting and high fantasy structure; indeed, I can't really think of a more overtly epic children's book. And as with all great epics, the story can't end after just one quest...
    • 5/5
      I know someong who reads each day of this book in synchrony with Christmas. I can understand that. Lovely balance of atmospheres - from gentle, loving family to powerful, dark and brooding.I rather recommend this to anyone over the age of 12 - younger is there's a parent to hold their hand.Bits of it had me scared - and I read it at 30
    • 4/5
      Classic YA/children's novel of kids getting involved in the eternal struggle between good and evil, order and chaos. Some really memorable imagery -- the encroaching cold, the birds -- and appealingly non-didactic prose make this one something I'll recommend to the next generation.
    • 4/5
      On his 11th birthday, Will Stanton finds out he is one of the Old Ones, a guardian of The Light, and is charged with collecting the Circle of Signs to ward off the forces of The Dark. This is much more in line with what I had expected from this series (the first book didn't quite measure up) and I very much enjoyed all the spins on mythology and history. It is a young adult novel, but the baddies are scary enough for grown-ups and all characters are well-rounded and easy to get invested in. The reader of the audio version is also very good and I will be listening to the rest of the series to see what happens with both characters and plot.
    • 5/5
      This book is my most favorite of all five in this series.
    • 4/5
      A challenging book for fans of Harry Potter. Not a lot of humor, but lots of darkness and suspense. A tough read -- but nothing crazy. Fine for any kids who can handle the challenge.
    • 5/5
      Read this at school in English and it has become one of my favourite books, though I haven't read it in years. I was excited when I heard it was going to be made into a movie, alas, the only things they kept were the title and the name of the main character, which is a shame as the book won literary awards (if I remember correctly :))
    • 3/5
      This was a decent read, I am still working through this series, but was a little put off by the abrupt change of pacing and the seeming character confusion from the first book to this. I plan to read on in the series, but found myself pushing forward to get through to the next story.