Book Two. Title book of the "sequence." New children, rather new child - although there had to be quite a crowd of children because the child, Will Stanton, is the seventh son of a seventh son. This fact is not immediately apparent because, for one thing, Cooper never gets around to actually counting the offspring - and secondly because the first son of the seventh son died in infancy and is never mentioned in the family.
Is the eleventh birthday something significant in British folk whatever? It seems to come up regularly. Harry Potter, for example, is carried off from the dreadful Dursleys on his eleventh birthday. In this case, on his eleventh birthday (on Midwinter day) Will comes into his mythic inheritance. He is revealed as the last born of the Old Ones, some of whom, like Merriman Lyon (Gumerry of Book 1) have been around for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Will's coming of age launches an epic battle between good and evil - all of which takes place between the winter solstice and Old Christmas (January 6). Of course, a great deal of the action takes place outside time, so the usual constraints did not apply.
It was really pretty good. The fact that I have been reading epic fantasy for so many years is probably a handicap. This volume was even blurbed in comparison to Narnia and MiddleEarth - although the Tolkien connection escapes me. This owes far more to the tradition and mythology of the British Isles than Narnia does. I think that one of its problems is that it does not seem to be written to its apparent target audience. It is listed as "age 8 and up," but the writing and the themes are a bit beyond eight year olds of my acquaintance and even a stretch for most twelve year olds.
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