Before YA Was King (& win the complete Dark is Rising series!)

Everybody (except me) is writing YA these days, it seems. Harry Potter had barely died down before the Twilight series relit the flame, and the whole forest caught fire. Yeah, yeah, dim-bulb analogy.

Anyway, YA paranormals did not spring fully formed from the wombs of Mizzes Rowling or Meyer. Look at Susan Cooper, for example, a British fantasy author who wrote a five-book YA fantasy series (although it was still considered children's lit back then) called The Dark is Rising Sequence--because the term "series" hadn't yet come into vogue. The books borrowed heavily from Arthurian legends and British history but have a more modern YA feel to them than many books of that era.

A month or so ago, a new omnibus edition including all five books in the series was released by Simon & Schuster/McElderry. Here's the scoop:

Will Stanton's ordinary life is shattered with the dreadful revelation that the Dark--the source of all evil--is rising in its last and greatest bid to control the world. He finds that he is no ordinary boy, but the last-born of the Old Ones, immortals dedicated to keeping mankind free from the Dark. Soon, Will is swept up in the great battle, along with his ageless master, Merriman; the three Drew children, who are mortal but have their own vital part to play; and a strange albino boy named Bran. These six fight fear and death in a quest through time and space interwoven with the most ancient myths of the islands of Britain--until, at last, Will and Bran find the weapon that will ultimately vanquish the Dark.

The five books, written between 1965 and 1979, are: Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark is Rising; Greenwitch; The Grey King; and Silver on the Tree. The 2007 film "The Seeker" was adapted from book two of the series.

Want to read some vintage YA? For a copy of The Dark is Rising: The Complete Sequence, containing all five novels, leave a comment with the usual drill: +1 for comment, +1 for blog follow, +1 for Twitter follow @Suzanne_Johnson, and +1 for a Tweet or RT of one of my tweets. Read on!