Books like “The Dark Is Rising”

What to read after “The Dark Is Rising” by Susan Cooper: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The Raven Boys
Maggie Stiefvater · 2012
Similar plot moves: “Prophecy” and “Quest”
Blue has grown up in a house of psychics and is warned she will cause her true love's death. Drawn into the search for a lost Welsh king with a group of boys from a prestigious school, she finds her life tangled with theirs and with their dangerous families.
2
Malice
John Gwynne · 2012
Similar plot moves: “Chosen One” and “Prophecy”
The Banished Lands have known peace for years, but old rivalries are waking. Corban, son of a village lord, dreams of becoming a warrior; far away, a princess and a giant's son are caught up in the schemes of kings. A prophecy of the Bright Star and the Black Sun begins to unfold.
3
Pawn of Prophecy
David Eddings · 1982
Similar plot moves: “Chosen One” and “Prophecy”
Garion grows up on a quiet Sendarian farm, unaware of the forces watching him. When a mysterious storyteller and a royal sorceress arrive, he is drawn into a search for a stolen artefact, travelling with a company that hides its true purpose from him. The old prophecy of the Belgariad has begun to move.
4
The Neverending Story
Michael Ende · 1979
Same genre: “Children's fantasy”
Bastian, a lonely boy, steals a book about the dying world of Fantastica. As he reads he is drawn into it, and discovers that only he can give the Childlike Empress a new name and stop the Nothing from swallowing the land.
5
The Blue Sword
Robin McKinley · 1982
Similar plot moves: “Chosen One” and “Coming of Age”
- Chosen One
- Coming of Age
Harry Crewe, newly orphaned, travels to a remote outpost on the Darian border to live with her brother. Corlath, king of the Free Hillfolk, carries her away from the fort, and she finds an old magic waking in her blood. Caught between two peoples, she must decide where she belongs.
6
The Eye of the World
Robert Jordan · 1990
Similar plot moves: “Chosen One” and “Prophecy”
Three young men from the village of Emond's Field are driven from home by monsters out of legend. Pursued by servants of the Dark One, they learn that one of them may be the Dragon Reborn, destined to save the world or break it.
7
Northern Lights
Philip Pullman · 1995
Similar plot moves: “Chosen One” and “Quest”
Lyra Belacqua lives among the scholars of Oxford in a world where every person has an animal companion called a daemon. When children begin to disappear, she travels north with a mysterious instrument and a fierce armored bear to uncover a conspiracy about the substance called Dust.
8
The Riddle-Master of Hed
Patricia A. McKillip · 1976
Similar plot moves: “Chosen One” and “Quest”
- Chosen One
- Quest
Morgon, prince of the island of Hed, won a riddle contest against a ghost and now wears three stars on his forehead. When shape-shifters attack and the High One's realm begins to stir, he leaves his farm behind to seek answers about the fate that binds him to a land he has never seen.
9
Eragon
Christopher Paolini · 2002
Shared in the plot: rider, learn
Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the mountains, and it hatches into a dragon. Chosen as her rider, he is hunted by the king's servants and must leave his village to learn the ways of the Dragon Riders and join the rebels.
10
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C. S. Lewis · 1950
Same genre: “Children's fantasy”
- Chosen One
- Prophecy
Four children step through a wardrobe into Narnia, a land locked in endless winter by the White Witch. With the lion Aslan they are drawn into a struggle for the country's freedom, and one of them betrays them all.
11
The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman · 2008
Same genre: “Children's fantasy”
- Prophecy
- Coming of Age
After his family is murdered, a toddler wanders into a graveyard, where its ghostly residents adopt and raise him as Nobody Owens. He grows up among the dead while the killer who took his family is still searching for him.
12
Black Sun
Rebecca Roanhorse · 2020
Similar plot moves: “Chosen One” and “Prophecy”
In the city of Tova a solar eclipse is coming, and with it an old prophecy of a god reborn. Xiala, a disgraced sea captain, is ordered to carry a strange young man to the city, while Serapio has been shaped since childhood for a ceremony he does not fully understand.