"Over Sea, Under Stone" is the first of five books in Susan Cooper's classic "The Dark is Rising" sequence. In it, three children on holiday in Cornwall stumble upon an ancient map, and quickly find themselves embroiled in a race against both time and the forces of The Dark to find an ancient treasure. Aided by their mysterious Great-Uncle Merry, Simon, Jane and Barney can only depend on themselves, as familiar faces turn out to hide menacing intent, and the sunny shores of their vacation spot conceal unexpected dangers.For readers of modern young adult fantasy fiction, many elements of "Over Sea, Under Stone" will seem familiar, but this is truly one of the originals. The characters are particularly well-written - with each capable of making both mistakes and heroic effort - and there is a realism here that is uncommon.That said, the author, a reporter at the time, wrote this novel in her spare hours at the urging of a colleague, not knowing then that it would soon become a quintet of volumes describing the arc of a larger story. As a result, many readers will perceive that "Over Sea, Under Stone" is essentially an introduction to the battle between The Light and The Dark, and it is the succeeding volumes - which include both a Newbury Honor winner and a Newbury Award winner - that truly make this series worthy of the esteem in which it is held.

4.5 starsI have to admit I wasn't expecting a lot from this book -- I thought it would be much more geared toward the middle-grade crowd and probably fall in with the books I would've loved as a kid but if I read them now I'd be bored. But! I was happily surprised (and by surprised I mean snagged hook line and SINKER by this brilliance).It starts out feeling very Narnia-esque; a family siblings go to stay with an eccentric uncle professor and then the kids discover a passage behind the wardrobe. Even if that wasn't the world's biggest Narnia nod, it's still clever and sweet. Once the kids found the map in the attic, it felt very Boxcar Children-esque (my favorite books when I was a kid). They have to work out the clues to solve this mystery before the bad guys get there first (and how bad they were -- creepers!) And by the halfway point it had just morphed into a full-on Grail quest and I'm over here fist pumping. :DSo yeah. If you put Narnia, the Boxcar Children, and Indiana Jones into a blender, this would be the amazing smoothie that comes out. It was so brilliant (especially Prof Lyon, OMG) and so fun and really unexpectedly creepy. There were several points where I found myself legitimately creeped out (the bad guys were EXCELLENT bad guys). The kids acted and sounded like kids. There were a few grammatical errors, quotation marks missing and things like that, but this was overall a really cool book. Excited for the rest because I looooooove Celtic mythology.Thanks tons for the recommendation, Meg! <3

I've been wanting to read this series for many years and the book is a perfect escape from stressful uni study! I really enjoyed the brisk, engaging writing that vividly described this lovely part of England and I wanted more than anything to follow Barney, Jane and Simon as they moved from harbour to rocky outcrops to little bays and beaches in search of the Grail.It helps if you're familiar with the Arthurian legend and Merlin, but really anyone can enjoy this timeless adventure story and, let's face it, any book that features a group of children, a rented holiday house and a dog are destined to an adventure or three. If you've read too many Bookclub tomes or simply want to rediscover your inner child, come in here and enjoy.

It's been many, many years since I first read this series. It was one of my favorites as a child, so I just recently bought the boxed set to work my way through it again.Over Sea, Under Stone is, if I recall correctly, not really part of the main series, being more of an introduction to the war between Light and Dark, with few of the characters appearing in the later books, except of course for Merriman Lyon. I remember even as a kid thinking that this was the least interesting book in the series, and rereading it as an adult, it was decent light entertainment, but very much a fairly typical children's adventure. Three pre-adolescent children, Simon, Jane, and Barney, visiting a Cornish seaside town on vacation, are caught up in an adventure when they discover a mysterious map, which their Great-Uncle Merry tells them is a clue to a priceless treasure that Must Not Fall Into the Wrong Hands. The justification for the wise and ancient Dumbledore figure letting three kids get themselves involved with a battle against the forces of darkness that they barely understand is a bit thin, but it's typical for this kind of book.These early depictions of Merriman (who is the only character of major importance in the later books) and relatively banal servants of the Dark are a gentle easing into the series for younger readers. There isn't much in the way of magic in this first book: supernatural elements are only hinted at. The kids are plucky and clever about gathering clues and finding the MacGuffin, but mostly they benefit from nick-of-time rescues and the reader's knowledge that even minions of evil won't really hurt children in a children's book. But for all that, it's a fairly intelligent book and draws on old Arthuriana and ancient history, so definitely one I can recommend to kids who are willing to read a book that's rather more thoughtful than exciting.I'm going to plunge ahead into the other books, but with the hope that they pay off, and that this first book isn't an indicator of the entire series being simply not as interesting and fun as it was when I was twelve.

This book was bad... Really bad. I think maybe if I had read this as a young child it wouldn't have bothered me, but reading this as an adult it wasn't a good read....I picked this book up as a recent Magical Space Pussycats read and I had hoped to enjoy reading a kid's fiction for once. Unfortunately this story really suffered from prejudices and poor writing so I found myself getting more and more frustrated page by page.In this story we not only see three young British Middle-class children making fun of the working class, anyone foreign, anyone gay and anyone even remotely different, but we see them doing so completely obliviously. These three children aren't 'bad', in fact they are the 'heroes' of the book, but the problem of the time it was written (60s) is that a lot of people (clearly including this author) held many of these prejudices themselves and had no issue writing these into their own works.This is a story following three kids who go on an adventure to the coast and they stay in a very old house owned by their Great Uncle Merry. Whilst there they discover a map which they think will lead them to the Holy Grail of King Arthur so they follow the clues and try to find out where it leads. For me this wasn't a good read and I definitely won't be reading more in the series or by this author. Sadly there are many other books from the 60s which are much, much better in terms of plot, writing, and not being entirely phobic of everything. 1* overall - wouldn't recommend.