This was a disappointing end to a disappointing series. "It's all too... vague," says Jane at one point, at the start of yet another random adventure, a sentiment that unfortunately applies to the whole of The Dark Is Rising sequence.I don't even know where to begin, so I'll start with the same criticisms I had with the other four books: no explanation about how all the magic works and overuse of capitalized words that signify nothing. Now, there is a little speech Will gives at the beginning of this book about how there are the Old Magic, Wild Magic, and High Magic, and how there are two "poles" (the Light and the Dark) and how the Old Ones are there to keep the Dark at bay, etc. But this is a summing up of rather than an out and out explanation. There's no exploration of the myriad things they can or cannot do, seemingly dictated by what is needed by the plot. There doesn't seem to be any set rules by which all this magic is governed, and any new magic is introduced to fit the plot and isn't really revisited again.Questions! I have so many questions that I know now will never be answered, such as:-What does it mean when Will's scar burns?-Why do Will and Merriman shout at each other in loud situations when they can easily use their telepathy?-Why does Will have trouble learning Welsh in "The Grey King" when in "Silver on the Tree" it says that learning a new language (in this case Latin) "came without effort to an Old One, as did any language of the world..." (Chapter 3: The Calling).-Why do bunches of twigs from 7 different trees make magic grenades?-If the Drew kids are so important to the whole saving the world adventure, why are they continually kept in the dark about what's going on?-You must do what I say or something bad will happen.-Okay, what do I have to do?-I can't tell you that.-Why?-Can't tell you that either.-Why is the Lady so weak throughout the whole series, and yet when the Dark issues a challenge to the High Magic court of law (I KID YOU NOT!) she appears as if nothing were wrong with her and helps officiate?-Why would there be a freaking courtroom scene right in the middle of the buildup to the end battle? As in, both sides are racing to the battlefield and boom! court scene?-Why do the Dark and the Light follow what the High Magic court says when Will himself earlier said "No other power orders them"?-Why was there a slight rewrite about what happened when the six Signs were joined? What Will remembers here is different that what happened in the 2nd book.-Why would the revealing of a "mole" be shocking here when the character was really barely introduced in this volume and exists only for a few pages of the whole saga?-Why would anyone think this is as good or better than Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Narnia, or His Dark Materials?I could go on, but my point is made. The writing and descriptions are well done, the story imaginative, but it's all for naught if the details are lacking and the plot is weak. Even the philosophical underpinnings are contradictory and muddled. I don't recommend this for anyone above the age of 12. There are far better thought out and sophisticated books and series out there than the Dark Is Rising's simplistic approach to everything.-So, what's my job as an Old One?-You, and only you, can find the objects needed to vanquish the enemy.-Okay, where is the first one?-Everywhere and nowhere. Here and there. In This Time and Out of Time.-....-(pointing) It's over there.-Oh, there it is. That was easy.-You did have to get a chair to reach up there.-I guess.-Okay, so the Five of us are here.-Shouldn't there be Six of us?-Shut up, that doesn't matter right now.-You don't have to be rude.-That's the way it is with us Old Ones.-So where's this thing we're supposed to find?-I haven't said that part yet!-Sorry. Go ahead.-I'll say it when I want to, not when you tell me. (pause) Okay, so we have to find this hidden object.-Where?-I dunno. All I have is this mysterious riddle. "Find the thing you're looking for somewhere that isn't here."-What kind of riddle is that? Everywhere else is somewhere that isn't here.-Well lets start looking then. (pointing) Let's start over there.-Omigod, it's right there!-Whew! That was really hard.-No it wasn't. We found it in the first place we looked.-You know, it's a good thing you won't remember any of this when we're done.-Okay, so I'm a normal human child. What do I have to do to defeat the Dark?-Tsk child, there's no such thing.-But you just told me there was. There's a Dark and a Light, and the Light is good and the Dark is bad.-(waving his hand in the air) Forget everything child, you are just a human who can't handle knowing these things.-Who the eff are you? Obi Wan?-I said forget!!-Forget what?-Good. Now, we have a very important thing to do.-What?-We must find... a hidden object.-Why?-Because if We don't find it... They will.-Who's they?-They! With a capital T!-Okay... who are They?-They are the Dark. We are the Light.-I thought I wasn't supposed to know that.-When it's convenient for me. Now go find it!-So, the end battle, is it gonna be totally rad and violent and epic?-It sure is!-There's six of us. Well, actually seven, maybe eight, but whatever. What's our role? What's gonna make us beat the Dark? The magic sword? The six magic signs? The albino kid? Merlin? The old broad?-No. Well yes, but not really.-So... what?-Well, we're gonna pick a flower.-Say what?-It's a totally magical flower though. On a totally magic tree.-We need seven people and a magical lady to do this?-Yes.-Really?-Yes.-Really really?-Yes! We need the sword to cut the flower.-So, any one of us could do this.-No, only the albino kid can use the sword. The rest of us have to help keep the Dark away.-How?-We'll stand around the tree holding the Signs.-Oh. We can't just put them around the tree?-No.-We have to hold them? One per Sign?-Yup.-Why?-....because.
Well, this was exceedingly disappointing. Silver on the Tree encapsulates and highlights every single thing that was frustrating about the series as a whole: the vagueness of the plot, the lack of any real sense of danger, the quests that are not real quests and are more like stumbling unto things, the overwhelming sense that everything is pre-ordained even though everybody talks about free will, the lack of any character development, the romantic obsession with King Arthur.Actually, I am still not really sure what exactly the Dark is. How is it rising? I mean, I understand, in theory, because evil is something we all know about; but I do not think this was transplanted into the pages that well – it almost feels like there is a reliance on pre-knowledge of tropes and ideas and because of this a lot of the world-building, if we can even call it that, is merely glossed over.Speaking of the Dark and of Evil. There is one particular moment in this book that gave me cause for pause. The Drews witness a young boy being attacked because he is Indian. It is a very in-your-face moment that is later revealed to be a sign that the Dark is indeed rising – as though racism is a result of magical evil and not a social issue. Does this mean that if the Dark had not risen, there would no longer be racism in the world? I’d say this is not the intention here because the idea that humans can be both good and bad and have free will is reinforced throughout. But then I ask you, what is the point of the Dark? Either Racism is a result of the it rising or it’s a human thing. This series has no logic, sometimes.Stuff happen because they must, tasks and quests are undertaken by rota and challenges are faced in the most anticlimactic way by people remembering things they already know “deep inside” or by reciting poems and singing. We are told over and over again that the main characters are protected and nothing will happen to them and as such, any sense of real menace is taken away and everybody just follows these rules and it is just so boring. The Drew siblings are brought back because they have an essential role to play and that role is… to hold a Sign? It was hinted throughout that Barney is special but that went absolutely nowhere. Worst of all: this is the last book in a series and after a long build up to the Dark rising, the ending comes and it is anticlimactic to the extreme. Did I get it right that the Dark would rise only if they got a mistletoe from a tree? Did that really happen?Silver on the Tree is not only an unsatisfactory end to a series, in my opinion. I am glad I gave the series a chance and read it but I can’t really say I found this book specially good or interesting. Interesting quotes that I didn't include in the review: The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.
What do You think about Silver On The Tree (2000)?
Concluding my seasonal* reread of The Dark is Rising, the series' last and longest book. Also, somehow, the hardest to read. You know how sometimes, a book isn't bad or boring you, but you still find your eye sort of sliding off the text? And yet the story is definitely making it through to you, albeit in a fractured form. The whole series has had an aspect of dream to it - waking in the middle of the night to find oneself back in time, and so forth - but it's a deeper dream this time, with much of the action relocated from the everyday world, or even its hidden magical corners, to the Lost Land, a whole country gone in time. The last battle looms, which is inevitable enough; more impressively, it's no anticlimax, and given emotional weight by turning less on the clash of cosmic forces than on a single, heartbreakingly human decision. And at the end, magic passes from the world, and a story about ancient protections and immortal guardians reaches rather awkwardly for the moral that humanity must take care of itself now. Still wonderful books, which I look forward to foisting on friends' offspring once they're a little older.*This was possibly the volume where I most closely mirrored the temporal contours; I started on Midsummer's Eve, then read the Midsummer Day chapter at solstice dawn on the Heath.
—Alex Sarll
And so ends my The Dark is Rising Reread in accordance to the book's 40th Anniversary. And I'm going to do a little bit of philosophical musing here.For me, the entire sequence could be summed up by this one quote from Gwion:"All life is theatre," he said. "We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves...."And indeed this whole battle between the Light and the Dark feels like one big stageplay, wherein each participant is an actor, whose actions and decisions are limited to the role he or she plays. The Dark was destined to rise and they were also destined to fall as it's stated so in the poem:“When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back;Three from the circle, three from the track;Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;Five will return and one go alone.Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long;Wood from the burning; stone out of song;Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw;Six signs the circle and the grail gone before.Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of goldPlayed to wake the sleepers, oldest of old.Power from the Green Witch, lost beneath the sea.All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree.” It was inevitable, the triumph of the Light and the fall of the Dark. So what's the point of the whole struggle if everything's predetermined? But trying to answer that question is like trying to explain the concept of 'destiny.' Some people say that we make our own destiny, but who can actually prove that the path you're making for yourself isn't something that's already written for you and you're just playing it according to the script?I'm not really sure if I'm getting my point across quite clearly, but the one thing that makes The Dark is Rising Sequence so magical for me is that it brings this feeling of wonder, the feeling something you can't explain in words. It's like trying to explain life and the laws that govern it. Of course, it also really helps that the book is written with such rich imagery that it enhances one's reading experience.Now, about the ending. Let's not talk about the ending because it makes me upset, not in the 'Omg! That sucks!' way but more on the 'What the heck?! Do you have to do that?!" manner. Poor Will though. (It's alright bb. Spend eternity with me. Haha)
—Gongjin
And so, my headlong, occasionally giddy, somewhat breathless rampage through The Dark is Rising sequence ends; and it ends here, with this book of almost breathless bigness and Breugel/Dali/Escher-esque overtones. It is a heck of a series this, huge and madly inventive (though that's wrong, it doesn't feel as if it's invented, it feels real, all of it, as though Cooper's just pulled off the lid of something and let us look inside), and it is a heck of a reading experience to read them all in a gleeful, greedy rush.So Silver on the Tree is about the coming together of things. It features Will Stanton, Bran, the Drew Children, Merriman and others, all of them being brought together to play their place in the right space and time(s). There are moments in this book where Cooper got a little too internalised, a little too lost in the vision of her world(s) which to me, still needed some clarifying in places and bringing back to the reader. But that is selfish, really, and I do read selfishly at times because in books like this, I want it all to make sense. I want to know everything and in this sequence, I have come to realise I know so very little, and every time I finish them I have hungered, somewhat blindly, for more. And there is no more of this, this is it and this is the end, and it is is stunning and bold and so very, very big. Cooper soars, and the writing soars, and the endings and the resolution of things are soaring and stomach-turning and big, big, big.I did it. I read a series that I think, with my content smugness of having, at last, read them, should be obligatory. It is not without failure (then again, not many narratives are), but it is replete with victories so huge and so scopey and world-changing in nature, that it is an outstanding achievement and a reality-shifting read.
—LH Johnson
