The Grey King

boy meets boy; antics ensue. boy with Old soul meets boy with dog with old soul; old king wishes they never met. sick boy with too many siblings meets sickly boy with some serious father issues. little weirdo meets his match in another little weirdo; the latter teaches the former how to pronounce Welsh......more

*Happy sigh* I just finished rereading this one again last night. With the exception of the first book in the Dark is Rising series, I love all of them -- atmospheric, dreamy, and creepy, the lot of them. And steeped in old folklore and told in lovely prose so that they feel like they grew out of th......more

So, I've been reading Cooper's Dark is Rising series, which I somehow never got to as a kid despite hearing so much about it, and knowing it won a ton of awards. This one, for instance, won the Newbery, one of the biggest American awards for young adult fiction. And the overwhelming sense I've come......more

Normally, The Grey King would be my favourite of the five books that make up this sequence. Something about the setting in Wales, and Bran's loneliness and arrogance, and of course the tie-in with Arthuriana, and the way that it begins to bring in some more moral ambiguity when John Rowlands questio......more

In this 4th installment of the series, Will is going on his first solo quest. The beginning is quite mysterious because Will has apparently been very ill and is therefore sent to relatives in Wales to convalesce. The problem is that he can't remember! Indeed, there has been something vitally importan......more