text: I clearly do not share the enthusiasm of some of the reviewers here, who will all have to forgive me for thinking that Susan Cooper's "The Dark Is Rising" is plain awful. This book was recommended to Harry Potter fans who have run out of HP books to read. I must say it was a waste of my time to read "Dark."
  
  Never have I read a book in which no physical description is given for the hero. In this case, we are told that on his 11th birthday, an English boy named Will Stanton discovers he is the last of "The Old Ones." Unlike JK Rowling who, in the first pages of Harry Potter & the Philosopher's (or Sorcerer's) Stone, provides the reader with a vivid description of Harry as skinny, with an unruly mop of black hair, startlingly green eyes, and, of course, a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, Cooper does not describe Will Stanton at all. The result is that the reader, after having read 244 pages, still cannot visualize what Will looks like!!
  
  I also find quite annoying Cooper's approach to this good vs. evil tale. She is vague and abstract till the end as to who exactly are The Old Ones, and who or what exactly is The Dark. As for The Dark being evil, all the reader succeeds in gleaning is that The Dark means cold, snow, and--of course--darkness. Excuse me: but is this the best Cooper can do? 
  Is this what this book is about?--the Druid pagan worldview of light vs. dark, summer vs. winter, warmth vs. cold? What happened to the conception of evil as MORAL evil?
  