All three children must hold strong amidst the old magics in Cornwall a classic children’s adventure complete with special map but with Cooper’s deep knowledge of and interest in local British folklore centring and grounding it. This one starts off the sequence and finds Jane, Simon and Barney in Cornwall with their Great Uncle Merry, working out a series of clues to find a golden grail, first of a number of items of power which must be used to defeat the Dark. One theme I really noticed in the books this time is Jane Drew’s courage, practicality, intelligence and resourcefulness in the books in which she appears. But if you work and care and are watchful, as we have tried to be for you, then in the long run the worse will never, ever triumph over the better.” (“Silver on the Tree”, p. Good men will still be killed by bad, or sometimes by other good men, and there will still be pain and disease and famine, anger and hate. Now espcecially since man has the strength to destroy this world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvellous joy And the world will still be imperfect, because men are imperfect. “For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, not is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you. And yes, those are post-it notes stuck over “Silver on the Tree” as I have a horror of the Marie Llwyd at the best of times, let alone having it prancing around on the front of the book I’m reading! Unfortunately the edition I have is a horrible one: Simon and Schuster went for these weird covers. It was lovely re-visiting them and finding new details, coming from either my longer reading and life experience since last time, and stuff I’ve become more aware of in my reading over the years.

I last re-read all of these in early 2013, alongside Matthew, and my very short reviews are here. Then Twixtmas came along and I read the first two before New Year’s Eve and the last three from 1-9 January, writing this the evening after I finished the last volume.

Knowing the story fairly well, I watched and read the reviews stacking up, many by other lovely book bloggers I follow, and greatly enjoyed seeing their reactions to their read or re-read. (Much) earlier last year, Annabookbel decided to do a re-read of Susan Cooper’s wonderful “The Dark is Rising” sequence (her intro post is here), and while I was mightily tempted, I really like to start/read it over Christmas.

The dark is rising books in order