We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
(4) Base Camp
Don't get us wrong. The Dark is Rising has a straightforward plot and won't bog you down with a lot of big words or complex sentence structures, but it still packs a hefty punch. Why?
For starters, you have to learn all about a mythical world where characters are referred to by their occupations (a.k.a. the Walker) rather than, say, their first names. Plus there are a bunch of artifacts to learn about that don't really make sense until they're explained to us.
What's more, though, is that the novel asks big, million-dollar questions about the nature of human beings. We're asked to think about whether there are forces of Dark and Light duking it out all around us, and there's also lots to think about in terms of time and space since Merriman and the Old Ones can stop time or travel through it whenever they want (so cool). In the end, we're left with some pretty big concepts for a little novel, making this book a bit more of a trek than you might suspect when you first pick it up.