Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1) (1988)
Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1) is a 1988 adventure stories book written by Susan Cooper.
A summer in Cornwall, a rambling place called the Grey House, and three children with time on their hands. Simon, Jane, and Barney Drew climb to the attic and pull out an old parchment map, its markings half-worn but plainly deliberate. What they hold is a trail toward a grail of ancient power, and a marker in a long war between the Light and the Dark. Susan Cooper grounds the myth in real coastline and ordinary family bickering, so the danger creeps in slowly and close to home. The first book of The Dark Is Rising sequence.
Quick answers
What is Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1) about?
A summer in Cornwall, a rambling place called the Grey House, and three children with time on their hands. Simon, Jane, and Barney Drew climb to the attic and pull out an old parchment map, its markings half-worn but plainly deliberate. What they hold is a trail toward a grail of ancient power, and a marker in a long war between the Light and the Dark. Susan Cooper grounds the myth in real coastline and ordinary family bickering, so the danger creeps in slowly and close to home. The first book of The Dark Is Rising sequence.
When was Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1) published?
Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1) was published in 1988.
Who made Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1)?
Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1) was written by Susan Cooper.
Similar books
Explore Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1) guides
Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1) in our writing
A few thoughts on Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1)
Fans of this quiet, myth-under-the-everyday adventure should try Over the Garden Wall, whose two brothers wander a folkloric wood thick with the same eerie half-light. The 2007 film The Seeker adapts Cooper's second book directly, if loosely. For the Arthurian undertow, John Boorman's Excalibur carries the grail weight into grown-up myth.
An ordinary family's holiday turns into an Arthurian grail quest
Susan Cooper roots her Arthurian grail quest in real Cornish coastline and ordinary sibling bickering, so the ancient war between Light and Dark creeps in gradually instead of arriving all at once. That same myth runs through Excalibur's telling of the Arthur legend outright, its own sequel The Seeker and The Dark Is Rising, and the Pevensies' first brush with old magic in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Kids chasing a half-worn map toward a legendary lost relic
The Drew children spend this whole book chasing a half-worn parchment map toward a grail hidden long before their time, the same shape of quest that sends Digory and Polly after a world-making ring in The Magician's Nephew, Sabriel after her father's bells, Mossflower's Martin toward a legendary badger lord, and Tenar guarding an ancient ring in The Tombs of Atuan.
Gentle, half-eerie wonder hiding in ordinary landscapes
Cornwall's coastal magic in Over Sea, Under Stone stays gentle and slightly eerie rather than openly monstrous, the same hushed, half-familiar wonder that fills Over the Garden Wall's wandering brothers, Sophie's cursed cottage life in Howl's Moving Castle, Milo's absurd geography lessons in The Phantom Tollbooth, and the walled, magic-guarded town of The Girl Who Drank the Moon.