Tuesday, August 30, 2005

The Dork Is Rising

So I went and saw The Baxter last night after work, as I previously reviewed (and as harsh as I was on Michael Showalter, it really is a decent little flick, you can do much worse), and went home, was in bed by 10pm, and could not be restrained - I had to read the final hundred or so pages of the fifth and final book of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence, called Silver In The Tree.

Man, what an awesome acheivement. The way she brings everything together, the way it all leads to one huge moment... it inspires awe. The books got progressively better with each outing (though I might say I liked the first book, Over Sea, Under Stone, more than I liked the second, The Dark Is Rising); they were each richer, more lovingly detailed, more epic and impressive, than the one preceding it... I could really gush.

A really fantastic series.

Which, according to certain commentators, ahem, I am woefully behind the times in knowing. Huh, 'magin that, me being out of "the know". Naw, never!

There is that nagging lil' birdy at the back of my brain (or is it a Mogwai?) whispering that the only thing that got me interested in these books in the first place was the mention somewhere that they were going to make them into movies. So take that! How's that for cool and "with it"!

Now, having read them, I have a hard time imagining how movies could be made. The first and second books are WORLDS different in tone and share only one character, otherwise involving an entire different cast, until they are all united in the third. And that's only the most basic problem - above it all sits the fact that in order to be done right this would be a very, very expensive undertaking.

Though not, I think, as expensive as the His Dark Materials movies would be. Speaking of, I do prefer Pullman's Materials trilogy to The Dark Is Rising, but not by much, I think. Pullman's books were just... meaner, more vicious, and that, in case you hadn't noticed, really strokes my bone.

Cooper's books did leave me with one lingering question, though, that I don't think she wrapped up while she should have - why the three Drew children? Why were they drawn into this adventure? What was Merriman's real relationship with them, why did he choose them? I know there's a history there that we aren't getting, and I thought she'd address it since she raises the question a couple times in the final book, but in the end it hangs, unanswered.

And an essentially useless factoid - Susan Cooper married actor Hume Cronyn a couple years after his first wife, actress Jessica Tandy, died, and was with him until he died a few years later.
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