I thought I’d follow up The Dark is Rising with a new Susan Cooper book. I don’t think I’ve read anything else besides The Dark is Rising series by her, and figured it was about time.

And… it was okay.

Nothing spectacular, though maybe my expectations were a bit high. I mean it’s Susan Cooper after all. (I have the same expectations when I read Robin McKinley books: they need to be good.) But this was just okay. The basic story: Molly, an English girl in 2006, is having a rough time because her mom married an American who relocated the family to the States. Sam, an English boy in 1803, has been pressed into Naval service and ended up on the HMS Victory, with Vice-Admiral Nelson in the battle of Trafalgar. There’s a connection between the two, and between flashbacks from Sam, Molly figures out what it is.

I liked the flashback sections immensely. The detail about being pressed into service by the Press Gangs and life on the ship was incredible. However, I think Cooper fell short with the modern character. She just didn’t seem to fit. And her journey wasn’t nearly as interesting as Sam’s was. I found myself skimming the Molly chapters just to get to the next Sam chapter. And he dropped out of the story way too early.

The best part of the book, though, was the Afterword. (I love Afterwords. I often read them before reading the book.) In it Cooper writes this: ” Perhaps I wrote this book only for the change of meeting one of my greatest heroes, just as I was lucky enough to meet Shakespeare in a book called in King of Shadows and Merlin, long ago, in a sequence called The Dark is Rising. Writers are fortunate people.”

Indeed.