The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper

This is the Twenty-sixth in my one-book-at-a-time bookshelf.

It is perhaps significant that there is a gap of some eight years between the publication of this book and the preceding Over Sea Under Stone. There is a maturity in the writing of this book that wasn't there in her first book. It is as if the author found her voice and was then swept along by her material. This book has a certain texture which was missing from her earlier work - the 'seasoning' which makes a book something special.

This could stand as a work on its own and still find a place on my bookshelf, but is part of a sequence and all the more enjoyable as a result.