Can’t recommend this series highly enough.

It is truly a gem. The writing is of such high quality that it immediately draws you in and keeps you engaged from start to finish. The author has clearly done a great deal of loving research, which is evident in the rich and detailed world-building.

The books are beautifully crafted, with well-developed characters and a captivating plot. They are suitable for anyone from about age ten on up, but they also have enough depth and substance to be enjoyed by adults. In fact, I have reread many of these books as an adult, and they never get old.

It is a shame that these books are not better-known. They deserve to be widely read and appreciated by a larger audience. I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a great read.

You know what is truly strange? It's when grown adults engage in the act of reading or re-reading kids' books and then proceed to gripe about various plot issues or problems related to the mythological underpinnings. These are things that no 10-year-old would ever be able to notice or even care about.

I, on the other hand, had a completely different experience. When I was 9 or 10 years old and read these books, I absolutely adored them. I have extremely fond memories of feeling as if I was completely enveloped within the magical world that each book created. It was a time when my imagination ran wild, and these stories were like portals to different realms. Instead of nitpicking and complaining, I simply allowed myself to be carried away by the charm and wonder of the narrative. It's a shame that some adults seem to have lost that ability to just enjoy the simple pleasures that kids' books have to offer.

I have reread all 5 of these books over the past couple of weeks.

As a child, I recalled loving them deeply but couldn't remember any details. In fact, I remembered finding them confusing and dreamlike. This time, I wanted to pay closer attention and see if I could make them more concrete in my mind.

Well, they definitely hold up. They are not like some other books I could mention (*cough Wrinkle in Time cough*). Most of my reactions to reading these books are based on my previous experiences, so it's going to be rather idiosyncratic.

Now, I'm remembering why I was so obsessed with Welsh history as a child. Re-meeting Bran was like a ghost emerging - he was both so familiar and so strange at the same time.

I think the reason the books seemed so confusing and dreamlike to me as a child is that when the magic begins to occur, the logic becomes very dreamlike. "So we're on this train, and people pass by whom I recognize, but they're coming from the short end of the train, so there's no way they could have been there. And then the train turns into a boat, and King Arthur passes by in his boat, and then somehow we ride the boat right up the hill to this tree...." I truly love it.

I tried to get Jaden interested in the first one, but he wasn't really into it. Hopefully, someday I'll add this to the Shared-with-Jaden shelf.

I've already done reviews of the five individual books that make up this series.

However, I figure it's worth my writing up my thoughts on the sequence as a whole.

When I was a kid, I read Over Sea Under Stone and found it rather enjoyable.

But I could never manage to get into the sequel.

There was just something about it that didn't appeal to me.

Nevertheless, the series is hailed as a classic of fantasy, so I thought eventually I'd give it a try.

Now that I have, I can say truthfully that I probably didn't need to bother.

There's some utilization of Arthurian mythology, as well as other myths of Great Britain.

But it often comes across as derivative and more like a repetition rather than a fresh and exciting new concept.

The plots are generally either overly simplistic or a bit too convoluted, and there's never a strong sense of genuine tension.

No one is going to die or suffer too severely.

I feel that the biggest issue is that Cooper leans too heavily on archetypes and cultural associations when creating her forces of Light and Dark.

I feel as if I'm supposed to root for the Light over the Dark simply because they're the obvious good side, not because I've been given any reason to like them.

In fact, the two sides often seem quite similar, especially when they engage in actions like condemning a man to walk for centuries for making a mistake or infecting Will with a terrible illness to position him appropriately at the right moment.

Furthermore, I never had the desire to be an Old One.

When I read Harry Potter or His Dark Materials or Lord of the Rings, I yearn to inhabit the worlds they描绘 and have adventures like the heroes within.

I never felt that way about The Dark is Rising, especially since, despite a few passages in the second book, being an Old One seems to mainly bestow a few psychic abilities, a burdensome duty, and nothing truly cool or remarkable.

Honestly, I think if I hadn't read this in an omnibus, I might well have skipped the entire thing after finding the second book underwhelming.

As it stands, I completed the whole series, and while I don't precisely regret doing so, I can't claim it's had a significant impact on me either.

I don't even believe it's a situation where I would've enjoyed it more at the right age, because by the time I would've read this as a child, I'd already read far better and more engaging fantasies.

I think I will ensure that the next classic of children's fantasy I read will be one that I actually relish - or at least that elicits more thoughts and reactions than this one did.