This is Gonna be Good

I spent the fall semester of my junior year studying abroad in Greece.  I lived and attended classes in Athens and we took several trips exploring the rest of the country.   Needless to say it was amazing.  But no I did not speak Greek before I left and I learned some while I was there but I am far from fluent.  So I understood exactly what Will, from Susan Coper's The Grey One, was feeling when he was sent to his aunt and uncles with this warning, "They all speak Welsh, most of the time."  What was amazing to me and to Will was even though we were in places where we did not understand the language we could still get the gist of conversations.  I always heard that statistic that x amount of communication is non verbal but I never really believed it until I no longer spoke the language of the people I was with.

Me in Athens (Mars Hill right next to the Acropolis)

Speaking of language there are certain things you see in a book that let you know it's going to be good.  As I've mentioned before I love fantasy so when I saw the note in the beginning clarifying, "Although all the characters in this book are fictitious the places are real... The Brenin Llwyd I did not invent," I suspected I would really enjoy this book.  But it was this line that convinced me this book was going to be great, "It is because you are not properly human, but one of the old ones of the Light put here to hold back the terrible power of the Dark.  You are the last of that circle to be born on Earth. And I have been waiting for you."  How can you not want to read more after that?

Will is in face an old one and the story is him battling the dark.  My only complaint is that this is a series but I didn't realize that going in.  I thought the beginning was a little abrupt without a lot of character development but once the story really got going I forgot all of that.  Then on the last page of the book was this line, "Here ends The Grey King, fourth book of the sequence named The Dark is Rising."  What!!  That should be at the beginning so poor unsuspecting people don't jump in the middle.  At least now I know what I'm reading after I finish the Newberry medals. 

Listening to a different language, battling the dark...that's kids stuff.