The Shield Ring, by Rosemary Sutcliff
After reading this book, I finally figured out what author Sutcliff reminded me of: Ursula Le Guin, circa A Wizard of Earthsea. The formal, slightly archaic, elegant style; the immersively detailed setting and culture; the alternation of leisurely description of place and daily life with intense scenes of action and emotion. If you like A Wizard of Earthsea, you will very probably to like Sutcliff.
A Saxon child, Frytha, is one of three escapees when the Normans fire her village (the others are a shepherd and a dog.) She is taken to a Norse stronghold, where she is befriended by a boy named Bjorn. She learns the ways of her adopted culture, and he wonders if he’ll be brave enough to stand up to Norman torture should he be captured. When he finally goes to infiltrate a Norman camp, she follows.
The plot is simple but powerful, a story of a doomed society holding out to the last. But it’s not awesomely depressing. (Without spoilers, I’ll just say that while what happened historically is known, the fate of the individual characters is not.)
It doesn’t have the continuous narrative drive of Eagle of the Ninth, because while there are several sections that build lots of suspense, there are also several long time-skips, so the tension gets set back and then must be ratcheted up all over again. But it was overall gripping, moving, and beautiful.
I loved the main characters and several of the minor ones, and the precise details of the exotic-to-me time and place made the settings of many historical novels seem like flimsy, painted plywood flats. It's historical, not fantasy, but the culture was so alien to me that it much of the sense of wonder of really good otherworld fantasy.
The Shield Ring
A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1)
This entry was originally posted at http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/871718.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
A Saxon child, Frytha, is one of three escapees when the Normans fire her village (the others are a shepherd and a dog.) She is taken to a Norse stronghold, where she is befriended by a boy named Bjorn. She learns the ways of her adopted culture, and he wonders if he’ll be brave enough to stand up to Norman torture should he be captured. When he finally goes to infiltrate a Norman camp, she follows.
The plot is simple but powerful, a story of a doomed society holding out to the last. But it’s not awesomely depressing. (Without spoilers, I’ll just say that while what happened historically is known, the fate of the individual characters is not.)
It doesn’t have the continuous narrative drive of Eagle of the Ninth, because while there are several sections that build lots of suspense, there are also several long time-skips, so the tension gets set back and then must be ratcheted up all over again. But it was overall gripping, moving, and beautiful.
I loved the main characters and several of the minor ones, and the precise details of the exotic-to-me time and place made the settings of many historical novels seem like flimsy, painted plywood flats. It's historical, not fantasy, but the culture was so alien to me that it much of the sense of wonder of really good otherworld fantasy.
The Shield Ring
A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1)
This entry was originally posted at http://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/871718.html. Please comment there using OpenID.