um...this book was okay...it was really confusing though. i only read it cus i had to for school and i would have never picked it up otherwise. the chapters are really long and i always had a straying mind when reading this book. if you like fantasy, this is and okay book, but if you dont DO NOT READ THIS BOOOK UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!...unless you have to for school!!! hehe

It is a shame that some schools require this book to be read, it is hand down the worst book I've ever read. It is hard to follow confusing and boring, I can't read this book for more than an hour without falling asleep, crying,or sometimes both. Bottom line- Don't read it ever.

this book has an amazing plot and i loved it sooooooo much. it is really a must read!

Great book, rubbish movie. This one is the best of the series, a must read for young kids who are fans of fantasy and adventure.

I loved it. It has just the right amount of everythin'. Some scary parts, some really funny parts, and some complicated parts. The only problem with it is that you have to read the whole series to understand everything and some people aren't ready to do that much reading.

The main character, a boy who has just turned eleven, is beginning to aquire some magical talents. A great read for readers of the Harry Potter or Eragon fantasy series which was awarded the 1974 Newbery Honor Award, though the story is still contemporary today.

On his eleventh birthday, a young boy discovers that he belongs to an ancient group of powerful beings. He is instructed in magical arts, and gets caught up in the struggle between forces of good and evil. Sound familiar? The pros of this book and series. The Dark is Rising sequence is wonderfully well-written. Some of the younger readers have complained about the story being difficult to understand, but older readers will enjoy the complex and well-planned story. Will is a positive character who loves his family, accepts responsibility, and learns from his mistakes. The cons: the story is infused with British paganism. Though it's interesting to read a fantasy based on the English mytho-historical traditions, the series presents these myths and practices as valid beliefs that just fell out of vogue. Though the series isn't blatantly anti-Christian, occultism is sometimes mentioned positively, and there is a pervasive sense that the ancient beliefs are somehow superior to the Christian faith, and servants of the Dark often hide behind a religious guise.

I read this book this year (2011) as a seventh grader and I found the plot in this book really hard to follow. The storyline (of what I could understand) was really not interesting and I thought this was a really uninteresting. A small part of the reason I highly disliked this book was because my class ran this book into the ground going into depth with it. The book really has no action in it. The only scenes that could even pass as an action seen where basically when the wind started blowing harder, it got colder, and the main character holds up a couple of signs and everything is OK again. As for the "violence" part of the rating- The burn is not graphically described at all and for the mother breaking her leg because she was forced to fall down the stairs, that is basically how it is described. If an eight year old could understand the plot, they would not even be offended. I honestly did not like this book at all and I would have given it a one star rating but I reserve that rating for books only as bad as the novel "Julie of the Wolves". And as for me giving it an "off" rating, it is not because it is inappropriate but more so because it is just a boring novel.