Greatly enjoyed Susan Cooper's Greenwitch, the third novel in her The Dark is Rising sequence, which I'm continuing to read despite doubts about the portentous nature of the enterprise. Happily novel number three generally escapes from this aspect of Cooper's saga, due in part to a shift in point of view.
The shortest novel in the series goes back to having the Drew children from Over Sea, Under Stone at its centre, though still featuring Will Stanton, the protagonist of the second novel. However, it's much more sophisticated than the first novel and the children gain greater depth, especially Jane, through whose eyes much of the action is seen. She and her two brothers are entirely unaware of the 'specialness' of Will (established as the newest of the 'Old Ones' in the previous book), though they are to some degree aware that there is something odd about him - especially so for Jane. Since the children are so ordinary there's a lot less of the 'other-worldly' than there was in The Dark is Rising, but at the same time the strangeness of Will is convincingly rendered.
And for this reader this time round the mythos of the titular Greenwitch worked to great effect, especially in terms of Jane's compassion for this creature of the Wild Magic. Cooper taking a slantwise approach to her binary opposition of the Light and Dark shows her at her considerable best.
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