Identify Books Conducive To The Grey King (The Dark Is Rising #4)
Original Title: | The Grey King |
ISBN: | 1416949674 (ISBN13: 9781416949671) |
Edition Language: | English |
Series: | The Dark Is Rising #4 |
Characters: | Will Stanton, Bran Davies, Owen Davies, The Brenin Llwyd, Caradog Prichard |
Setting: | Wales |
Literary Awards: | Newbery Medal (1976), Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Nominee (1977), Tir na n-Og Award (1976) |
Susan Cooper
Paperback | Pages: 165 pages Rating: 4.18 | 35080 Users | 871 Reviews
Specify Containing Books The Grey King (The Dark Is Rising #4)
Title | : | The Grey King (The Dark Is Rising #4) |
Author | : | Susan Cooper |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 165 pages |
Published | : | May 8th 2007 by Margaret K. McElderry Books (first published 1975) |
Categories | : | Fantasy. Young Adult. Fiction. Childrens. Middle Grade. Mythology. Arthurian. Science Fiction Fantasy |
Chronicle Toward Books The Grey King (The Dark Is Rising #4)
"Fire on the Mountain Shall Find the Harp of Gold Played to Wake the Sleepers, Oldest of the Old..." With the final battle between the Light and the Dark soon approaching, Will sets out on a quest to call for aid. Hidden within the Welsh hills is a magical harp that he must use to wake the Sleepers - six noble riders who have slept for centuries. But an illness has robbed Will of nearly all his knowledge of the Old Ones, and he is left only with a broken riddle to guide him in his task. As Will travels blindly through the hills, his journey will bring him face-to-face with the most powerful Lord of the Dark - the Grey King. The King holds the harp and Sleepers within his lands, and there has yet to be a force strong enough to tear them from his grasp...Rating Containing Books The Grey King (The Dark Is Rising #4)
Ratings: 4.18 From 35080 Users | 871 ReviewsAssess Containing Books The Grey King (The Dark Is Rising #4)
The Grey King is possibly my favourite book of this sequence -- and I swear that's not only because it's set in my home country. It's a lovely, lovely book. This is the most layered of the books, I think -- by which I mean this is the book that has the most to offer for people of all ages. There are the more open and obvious emotions of Bran -- grief, pride, arrogance -- and the more complex grief and guilt of Owen Davies, which I'm not sure a younger reader would be able to fully understand.It's so much fun to return to this series with a different level of accumulated age and wisdom and a deeper understanding of the Arthurian tales that run in an undercurrent through each book. While Dark is Rising is my favorite, this is a close second. After reading other series that have covered similar ground (The Raven Cycle and The Sarantine Mosaic in particular), these adventures feel like familiar territory. In this reading, I found myself feeling like the first half was rushed.
boy meets boy; antics ensue.boy with Old soul meets boy with dog with old soul; old king wishes they never met.sick boy with too many siblings meets sickly boy with some serious father issues.little weirdo meets his match in another little weirdo; the latter teaches the former how to pronounce Welsh words.super-powered boy meets albino boy with golden eyes; the former teaches the latter the meaning of friendship, power, and why old kings are bad news for everyone.Ancient Immortal Being meets Boy
Bran is a precious child
Ive been making a slow tour through Susan Coopers The Dark is Rising sequence for a few months now. Its undeniably an important series in the fantasy canon, but my personal reaction to it has been more ambivalent. I have been rather disappointed with the novels as stories. Theyre brilliant examples of methodical mythological remixing. Yet in adjusting the tone of the books to aim them to her younger audience, Cooper also seems to feel its necessary to remove a great deal of the complexity and
You know you love a book from your childhood a lot when you go out of your way on trips abroad to see the places where the action happened. Cooper's fourth novel in the DiR series is so steeped, no, drowned! in all things Welsh that you can't help but want to get the hell there and check it out. Which I did many years ago. Her works in this series especially are refulgent and replete with all kinds of British lore, especially Arthurian, and then some, but she reaches new heights of weaving them
The Grey King is possibly my favourite book of the sequence, and definitely one of my favourite books of all time. The things I noticed in this read through -- my full review, more of an overview of all the times I've read it, is here -- were mostly about the Welshness of it, and about the complexities of Will's relationship with the Light and humanity, and how exactly Bran is related to the Light.John Rowlands' little speech about the coldness at the heart of the Light always strikes me -- it's
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