A Jane Bites the Pile Review: Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

This review is the demented brain child of Laura at A Jane of All Reads and yours truly, Donna at Bites.

Originally published 1965.

Author website.

On holiday in Cornwall, the three Drew children discover an ancient map in the attic of the house that they are staying in. They know immediately that it is special. It is even more than that -- the key to finding a grail, a source of power to fight the forces of evil known as the Dark. And in searching for it themselves, the Drews put their very lives in peril. (goodreads.com)

So Laura and I have some books in common in our TBR closets so we decided to wear this particular outfit on the same day like a couple of besties from 1964.

So after we snorted our malts and tried to take out eyes with our bumper bullets, we got down to the business of reading, cat eye glasses and all. Like the good little demon child clones we are, we felt pretty much the same about OVER SEA, UNDER STONE, a quaint little ditty, fit for the middle graders, about a sibling team racing against the adults to find clues to save the world from the ever-encroaching Dark. Although for us old farts it can get a bit boring.

Now, it's never made all that clear just what the Dark is, what it can do, what the fate of the world is, what either side is striving for. It's all kept in the dark . . . where in the dark I don't want to know. But it's there. Squishing. We know there's a connection to King Arthur, we know there's a grail hidden somewhere and we know we have baddies dressed in black a la Spy vs. Spy chasing after them trying to get the elusive "it." Really, I think it's the chase that matters.

If it were a little more interesting. There's a lot of silly idealized 60s English children blathering on about Gumerry and whatever shall we do's and generally speaking as if they were 35 and sitting for a spot of tea, or living in a bubble filled with pink sparkles and daisies. One must remember that we're reading 1965 words so there's a lot of "shoulds" going on as opposed to "for reals." The language could have been checked at the door of The Queen's Head Pub with Hugh Laurie doling out proper British bitter. But once you get past that, and the absurd image of a 10 year old speaking like his grandfather, it's a flight of fancy book that offers much in the way of child shenanigans and adult bumbling, as with any other children's book of this age bracket. So it fits there at least.

Of course I couldn't help but running some wind sprints parallel to the NARNIA series by CS Lewis. It was inevitable. Laura, being the NARNIA virgin, hasn't had the thrill of being exposed to the likes of Jesus Aslan and his painted whore-hating ways but I enlightened her. Don't get me wrong; I loved the Narnia series but I think I was baptized by the end of it. While NARNIA left me burping up angel wing feathers, OVER SEA, UNDER STONE had a significant "Evil East" aftertaste for me. The Dark is always mentioned as coming from the east. Always. Now I don't know what the overall political climate was in England in the early 60s but this seemed reminiscent of rather medieval times. I kept expecting a wayward morning star or joust to pop up. Of course, Evil East carries with it many connotations and could be a number of things but, you know, instead of puffing up Christianity like Lewis, it seemed to elevate the evils emanating from the east more than anything, be it religions, cultures, whatever. Maybe it's just my brain going there and I'm pulling something out that isn't really there. Or maybe it's because I made the NARNIA connection so it's making its own dots to string together. I'm just saying, there's a lot of Eastern Evil going on here.

But it's ultimately very similar to NARNIA with children as the protags striving to save the day, a generally slower, introductory start to the series and the world, a whimsical feel. It's a good "classic" story. Maybe the floofy language adds to that. Maybe it's the children overcoming dark, evil odds. Whatever it is, they're similar in my eyes. And I think Laura needs to get herself baptized by Deacon Lewis.

Laura ultimately enjoyed OVER SEA, UNDER STONE more than I did. I'm chalking it up to the fact that I've already read THE DARK IS RISING and I totally heart that one so it's difficult to live up to those standards. Laura felt the ending "quite nice" and "cute" that "all those scholarly old gentleman chasing around children to steal a map." I'm hoping she'll be blown away Maxell-style by book two. Forget whimsy. That's nice in small doses. Those kids weren't in enough danger to me. They need to fight harder and stop relying on their ever so brilliant verbiage to get them out of scuffles. Have fist will punch.

Ban Factor: Low - What with ragging on the Evil East and good little children not talking in slang, this one would be on many a banner's shelves.

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

Originally published in 1973, copyright renewed in 2001.

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. (www.bn.com)

I’ll be honest. The only reason I picked up this book was because I thought it looked like a cool movie. I had no idea this book even existed until I saw the previews for the film back around the time Stardust came out. When I did buy it, I still hadn’t seen it although it was on my list of movies to watch.

I started reading but kept getting rather perplexed by the language. It just seemed a little too high brow for an eleven-year-old protagonist. So I flipped to the back of the book to read some information on the author and caught notice of her website address. So there I visited. Well, it’s a fan site turned official and when I started reading information, I became even more confused. They were speaking as if this book was rather quite old. So to the copyright page I flipped. Copyright 1973. So it is. I had no idea. Although it does explain the language.

At least a little. I’m not sure if anything explains the language in this book, really. I understand that once Will comes into his gifts, he’s not really 11 any more but an Old One (or an old soul as I’d like to think of it). His eleventh birthday awakened this Old One inside of him that gave him wisdom and age far beyond his years. That notion is downright interesting and I’d completely believed that if he hadn’t been speaking like that from the very beginning. It’s not necessarily the terminology but the propriety of his word choice that makes the speech just a little unbelievable for me in an eleven year old. Maybe the British are different. Maybe they’re much more refined by that age. Or it was a product of the time. Or both. But the language of the boy was the largest drawback for me in this book.

But that was pretty much it. And it was something I got used to by the end because the transformation of boy Will into Old One Will was evident by the end of the story so it was only natural. I just wish his dialogue and thoughts were truer at the beginning. Other than that I thought it was just a fantastic, beautiful story that I wished I had been turned on to when I was younger. Although, in all honesty, I don’t think I would have appreciated (or even liked it) nearly as much then as I do now. The language is fluid and perfectly captures the constant battle of the Light and the Dark, this archaic struggle that has been going on since long before Will’s existence.

As I said before, the growth of this young boy in such a short amount of time is phenomenal but even as it’s pointed out in the story, he’s no longer Will Stanton the boy but Will Stanton the Old One; two vastly different entities entirely. This isn’t Harry Potter where he had the help of everyone around him and really didn’t exhibit any intellectual or magically inclined growth at all throughout the books. Will had to stand on his own through most of the battle. He had support, sure, but there was no sidekick to work out the problems he couldn’t (or wouldn’t). His compatriots forced him to work out the things he had to. And he did. (That’s not to say I didn’t like Harry Potter, but I’ve never been a fan of Harry, the character, and I thought the kid got way more credit than he ever deserved.) He grew a tremendous amount in such a short amount of time.

I think the language is out of touch with today’s youth and I can certainly see more teens and middle grade readers turning to the movie more so than the book but then again but I could rightly be wrong. I think the story’s compelling enough that any reader, regardless of age, would get sucked into it and stand there, beside Will, fighting the Dark with him. It’s obviously doing something right since it’s proven the test of time already.

I did cave and watched the movie when I was about halfway into the book and I do have to say, it was a pretty good book to film adaptation. And in this case I actually liked the book better (unlike Stardust, for instance where I liked the film more than the novel). It was just much more visual for me. More realistic and just carried with it more weight. I could visualize it better. The scenes were stronger and I wish they had kept the scene with the king and the Sign of Water. I would have loved to see that. I also liked the book alluding to the fact that that king was King Arthur. If you’ve ever done research on the mythical king, you’ll know that if he had existed, it was sometime in just post-Roman, between 400 and 800 AD, or thereabouts. I think the nod was obvious and it made me like the story even more.

I do plan on reading the rest of the books in the sequence because I’m officially hooked now but as you can see on the right, I have a few more books to get through before I have a chance with those. If you haven’t read The Dark Is Rising, go buy it now and read it. It’s something you won’t regret

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