The Dark is Rising: Rant

 

When Will Stanton wakes up on the morning of his birthday, he discovers an unbelievable gift -- he is immortal. Bemused and terrified, he finds he is the last of the Old Ones, magical men and women sworn to protect the world from the source of evil, the Dark.

 At once Will is plunged into a quest to find six magical Signs to aid the powers of the Light. Six medallions -- iron, bronze, wood, water, fire, and stone -- created and hidden by the Old Ones centuries ago. But the Dark has sent out the Rider: evil cloaked in black, mounted upon a midnight stallion, and on the hunt for this youngest Old One, Will. He must find the six great Signs before the Dark can rise, for an epic battle between good and evil approaches.

 

 

 

  Okay, so let me just start off by saying that this is a rant, so if you love this book, you might not want to read this. I am not trying to bash the author in any way, and I am not trying to make anyone upset. I am just stating my opinion, so if you want to hear it, then keep on reading this.

 

 This book was absolutely horrid that I don’t even know where to start. The plot was terribly boring, and I found myself drifting off into dreamland while reading this. Everything for the main character, Will, was just far too easy. Everything was just handed to him and he didn’t have to work for anything. The plot was so confusing it made my head hurt. This whole book was leading up to something “exciting”, and it was terribly anti-climatic. And any big build-up was just totally crumbled at the end.

  

  Will has a supernatural gift (which I will not name here due to spoilers) took up a whole chapter of the book, and yet that was really the only time anything ever happened with it, minus a few parts. Also, everything was very disjointed. One minute this was happening, the next minute that was happening, and I would have thrown the book out of my window if I hadn’t had to read it for school.

  

  I also really disliked the characters. There was no character development at all. Does Susan Cooper think that, “Oh, then he read this book and was a five hundred year old-eleven year old boy” is going to count at character development? No. No. And no.Will annoyed the crap out of me, and I found myself wanting to tell him to just shut up at times. Also, I hated how the author called people, “The Rider, the Walker, and the Hunter.” No, Susan Cooper, you don’t need to do that. You can just call them, the rider, the walker, and the hunter, you know. They must have names.

  

  I also really disliked the writing style. Sure, it was pretty and it flowed, but the dialogue sucked and I really didn’t need to have one paragraph sentences, thank you very much.

  

  So, if you can’t tell already, I loathed this book. Overall, I gave it a 1/ 5 stars. Or star, really. One star.