The Dark Is Rising

1.5 stars
After the amazing first two chapters everything went downhill.
The book started out very atmospheric and eerie. The description of the landscape and of the animals' strange behaviour were really promising.
But the book let me down way too soon. The plot was rather simple but the execution made it quite complicated. Moreover, the writing style and tone somewhat changed and the novel became more and more a bore and a tedious read. Yet I dragged on and on because I was hoping for the magnificence of the first chapters to return. That sadly never happened, though.

2022 was full of bad reads for me. No surprise I'm ending it with another disappointing read.

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.

Loved this in the 1970's. Re-reading it now some 40 years later thanks to Robert Macfarlane and Julia Bird’s Twitter reading group, starting (like the book) on Midwinter Eve, December 20th. Follow along with the hashtag #TheDarkisReading.

Loads better digestible for adults than part 1 (which was, I understand, written as a sort of prequel after this one came out).

A magical, fabulous and imaginative book. I wish I would have read it as a kid!