Two poorly remembered fantasy series from childhood

June 14, 2018 5:12 PM

Yeah. It’s another one of these. Two fantasy series I read as a child with titles and authors I can’t remember. Maybe you can?

Series one: our Standard Fantasy Hero (boy, the Chosen One) must collect coin-like tokens with a Greek cross symbol inscribed on them. Arthurian legend is involved. As is a drown green witch goddess. That’s all I’ve got.

Series two: a more alien world, same chosen one archetype. Two key scenes: he encounters a species that is fascinated by mankind and has therefore constructed giant sculptures of human organs (eyeballs, etc.). At one point he crosses a bridge and there are horrors crossing with him that are invisible to him but that his companion can see. A dead king with a throne room that has a grate over it forcing supplicants to crawl.

These would have both been in a small town American public library in the late 80s.

Anything?

posted by mr_roboto to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

Best answer: Oh shit just figured out the first one. Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising. Sorry if you were typing that right now.
posted by mr_roboto at 5:16 PM on June 14, 2018 [8 favorites]

Best answer: The second one sounds like Geraldine Harris's Seven Citadels quartet, which was marketed as children's/YA fantasy but had some elements that suggested science fiction (it seemed possible that humans came from another world). Prince of the Godborn, Children of the Wind, The Dead Kingdom (the invisible horrors that only Prince Kerish-lo-Taan, who has the gift of true sight, can see, plus visions of dead Shubeyash's kingdom and the grate in his throne room), and The Seventh Gate (which features the alien Ferrabrinth and their fascination with the human form).
posted by yhlee at 6:54 PM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]

Oh, sorry--I misremembered. The citadel with invisible creatures is in Children of the Wind, not The Dead Kingdom. My bad!
posted by yhlee at 7:07 PM on June 14, 2018

Response by poster: Thank's yhlee! As soon as I read Harris's name I remembered it. Two new book series for my kid...
posted by mr_roboto at 7:34 PM on June 14, 2018

The Dark is Rising sequence is awesome! It was one of the first fantasy series I read as a kid that treated magic realistically (as strange as that sounds) and was deeply rooted in well-researched Arthurian legend and various bits of English and Celtic folklore. It made the whole thing feel so real and epic, despite the misty, dreamlike quality of the storytelling. So did the fact that the evils the characters faced were sometimes subtle and indefensible -- I still remember the slow-dawning horror and creeping claustrophobia of a scene in The Grey King where a dog owned by one of the main characters is pinned in an unnatural position, paralyzed, by a hexed stone -- and it was a revelation that characters associated with "good" and light might not escape unscathed. And frankly to this day I just assume that Wales is full of magic.

Dang. Clearly I need to reread these! (Ahem if anyone buys them on Amazon, do it through the MetaFilter affiliate link and help support the site)

Lucky kiddo, getting to read all that for the first time!
posted by alleycat01 at 8:54 PM on June 14, 2018 [4 favorites]

Ha, I'm re-reading the seven citadel books right now, and both these series (along with the earthsea books) were my gateway into fantasy as a kid.

A couple of years and my kiddo will be reading them too:)
posted by gaspode at 9:12 PM on June 14, 2018 [1 favorite]