Operation Read All the Sutcliff: The Shield Ring
Here we are at the last book in the Dolphin Ring series, except it was apparently written second. Apparently it is set slightly post-1066 and features Saxons and Normans! And possibly a female main character! I don't know, no one ever told me much about this one.
I see we are once again back to awesome nature description; there wasn't a lot of that in the last one. Here is Frytha (a Saxon) at age five and the Normans are burning her home. This is going to be another depressing one, isn't it?
And Frytha ate whatever Grim gave her to eat, and lay down and got up, and walked or climbed onto his back to be carried, just as he told her; and never thought to ask, or even wonder, where they were going, because she never really understood that they were going anywhere, only that the world had fallen to pieces and that it was very cold among the ruins.
Yeah. Whoo. Frytha is not having a good time, and Grim is turning her over to the Jarl Buthar, who is a complete stranger to her but is at least not Norman. And Frytha has now met Bjorn, who is a couple years older than her (so, what, seven?) and they are going to be instant BFFs in the way of many Sutcliff plots:
"My name is Bjorn the Bear, and my father’s name was Bjorn the Bear, but mostly people call me 'Bear-cub' yet awhile,” said the boy, and flung an arm over her neck. "I shall call you Fryth, but nobody else must. And nobody shall hurt you again, excepting me."
...excepting him? Uh.
(Also my ebook includes the word Xljaf. That's great. I paid money for this, guys, could you not have run a spellcheck?)
No, wait, now Bjorn is seven and he has to sleep with the boys and Frytha is sad. Also there is more Glorious Nature Porn. And Bjorn wants to be a harper and the harper (who is, BTW, old enough to have fought at Hastings) isn't even too mad when Bjorn borrows his harp. And what the hell, is this Sword Song?
Haethcyn nodded. "When Bjorn Sigurdson came west-overseas from Stavanger with the Dragon ships--that was in the days of Harald Fairhair--he took to wife a woman of the people who ruled this land aforetime. Seemingly it was a fierce wooing, for she was of proud stock, and she yielded at last half unwillingly, but yield she did; and came to spin beside his new-lit hearth-fire over yonder among the Eskdale Falls. She was your foremother."
I mean, the name could be a coincidence. I guess. Yield unwillingly. Blech.
Anyway. Plot plot. The Red King is coming north, and Frytha is watching people forge swords. Ah, the Shield Ring in the title is the name for the settlement. Now Frytha and Bjorn are making twig boats and have met Ari Knudson and they are talking about how someone named Ranulf Le Meschin tortures people. Suddenly now we have switched POV to Gille, Buthar's son, so that we can watch Buthar say they should surrender to the Red King, and Ari offers to bring the message. The Normans, being even more treacherous than the Saxons on the Sutcliff Scale of Evil People, kill the messengers and there's a big battle. Buthar and Aikin (whoever Aikin is; there are a lot of people in this book) swear vengeance.
And then we get Frytha's POV on finding out all this, and there is some Nature Porn and some very nicely described feelings:
For a while she stood quite still, feeling sick too, and lost, and coldly afraid, because if that could happen to someone who had been with her and Bjorn up the Sell Beck, nothing was safe or certain in the world any more, and the high, steadfast fells had lost their strength to shut out the dreadful things.
She goes off to find Bjorn, who has run away to ponder such things as whether he would break under torture and tell the Normans where this secret fortress they're living in is. Given the way this book is going so far, I'm sure we'll get to find out. Bjorn plays some music everyone likes -- by the way, the description in this book is really excellent -- and asks if he can go off to war, now that he's old enough. (He's almost 15 now.) So they give him his dead father's dirk and Dolphin Ring and he goes off to try to hold the road to Rafnglas with a bunch of other men:
No, Bjorn thought, they could not hurry the moon. Far up the dale, Heron Crags were beginning to darken as the light slid behind them, but the dale itself was still full of white radiance. Odd, how the moon drained the world of color; the red sandstone of the ancient rampart was ash-gray where the moonlight fell, black in the shadow. He wished the moon would hurry; he wished that he could hear the others. The cold taste of defeat was in his mouth, and he felt most horribly alone; suddenly half aware in his aloneness of some difference between himself and his kind--between himself and Gille, for instance. Some difference that had come down to him perhaps with his ring from that far-back foremother out of Wales.
He moved his hand on the spear-shaft, and felt the pressure of the battered ring on his finger. It had been rather loose for him when he first put it on but it was not so loose now. It must have been made in the first place for a hand that was narrower than his; but it had been made bigger; you could see the place where more gold had been let into the shaft. He wondered if that meant that it had been made for a woman, but somehow he did not think so; it had not the look of a woman's ring. Perhaps the people of Romeburg had narrower hands than the Northmen; that would explain it. Suddenly he wondered if someone wearing his ring when it was bright and new, someone with narrower hands than his, yet who was part of him in some way, had come this way before; had helped, maybe, to build the road that had gone back to the wild so long ago, and looked down over Eskdale from the red sandstone fort, when it too was new.
Just for a moment, the thought made him catch his breath as though he were looking down an unbearable length and loneliness of time, and the wind blew cold out of its emptiness; and then it was oddly comforting, and made him feel less alone.
See? The writing is totally better than the last book. Anyway, they hold the road and he fights a Norman. Later on Bjorn goes to a tavern to pick up some new harp strings and overhears some drunk Normans talking about invading them, if they can find them. The plan everyone comes up with is to build a nice new road for them, but make it go somewhere else. Because that's a plan. I guess. And then old Unna has a vision that there will be fighting, meaning of course that there definitely will be.
The Red King dies; there's a new king, Henry. There's a wedding and Bjorn sings a sad song and then everyone finds out the Normans are coming closer. All then men go off to fight, leaving Frytha and the harper, who tells her he thinks the day is coming when she'll get to fight too. There's some fighting, anyway, and more nature porn, and when Frytha goes to retrieve a lost horse she finds a Norman. He's kind of a crazy Norman, and Bjorn convinces everyone not to kill him because apparently it's bad luck to kill crazy people.
So we get a page of Le Meschin's POV, so we can learn about his battle plans -- yeah, you can tell this is an early book -- and it turns out the crazy Norman was just upset, and also has amnesia. And Frytha gets to help make a new raven banner for fighting -- because serious fights call for serious raven banners -- while listening to the harpist sing about Beowulf, because everyone likes Beowulf. And a messenger comes to tell them the Normans are even closer.
So Bjorn volunteers to go spying, because he knows a bit of Norman, and also because he's a harpist and people like harpists. It will totally work, except I bet it won't. Frytha starts thinking how it's like Beowulf going off to face the dragon and even he didn't do it alone (he didn't?) because his shield bearer went with him, so she's going to go too.
There are a lot of Normans, and Frytha covets their amber earrings. Bjorn talks his way into being taken on with the people going to Le Meschin by helping out with one of their horses, and Frytha claims to be his squire. They complain that using horses in battle is Norman trickery. They do some spying, but they are found out when Bjorn is called to play for Le Meschin and one of the knights there recognizes him as the dude he fought up by Rafnglas, because he has the Dolphin Ring. Uh oh. They torture Bjorn, who says nothing, and are about to torture her when they have to stop because the good guys are attacking.
Eventually they get free and get home and report their spying and how they're totally outnumbered. Bjorn still has one good hand to fight with and Erland who used to hate him offers to be his shield bearer. Bjorn gives Frytha the ring to hang onto while he fights. So there's a great big battle on the Road to Nowhere (Aikin dies) and they kill the Normans (and their Crazy Norman, who wanders in) and Frytha fights too, with bow and dagger. She and Bjorn both survive, actually, and she gives him his ring back. And the river is running red just like Unna saw in her vision, but that's because it's sunset.
So Bjorn is feverish and hallucinating that he's back being tortured by the Normans, something something dragon, and Aikin gets an epic funeral. When Bjorn gets better he and Frytha hang out and eat raspberries and play music and they are going to live happily ever after, the end.
I am now done with the Dolphin Ring series.
I suppose that the non-Ring books are going to be more depressing as I will no longer be able to use "who has the Dolphin Ring and have they already reproduced?" as a diagnostic for determining whether there will be at least one survivor.
What was up with the Crazy Norman?
Also, this book was really good; why did no one tell me that this one was so good? I am not sure there is any fanfic I would want in particular about this book, because pretty much everything I would want was explored during the story. It is, however, just a really fun read, full of excitement and pretty good plotting and excellent nature porn and, wow, actual female POV characters who are made of awesomeness. (Why could Sutcliff not keep writing female characters, again?)
Basically, yeah, I ♥ Frytha and Bjorn.
Yay Beowulf themes. I guess everyone likes Beowulf. Even the Normans. And, yeah, yeah, Bjorn has to go face the dragon and is set on fire (twice if you count the fever), A+ for Extremely Subtle Use of Theme, Sutcliff. Though, hey, I suppose there's no reason it has to be subtle.
I am not sure what else to say about this, other than that it was great fun and I am confused as to why it is not more popular in fandom.
Up next: This is the end of the Dolphin Ring series. I am at this point going to take a little break from reading Sutcliff and go read things that I am not making myself write huge posts about. Because eight in a row was a little bit much.
I do, however, have access to other Sutcliff novels that I can also read! After a break! These are the remaining Sutcliff books I currently have on my Kindle: Brother Dusty Feet, Knight's Fee, The Mark of the Horse Lord, Outcast. I am inclined to favor books set during the Roman era, so I am leaning toward reading one of the last two first, but you are welcome to try to convince me of any order you like. I will also have Beowulf: Dragonslayer and The Hound of Ulster when they are republished next month, but obviously I don't have them yet. I have a paper copy of The Shining Company, but it is packed away in a box and I have not found it yet, so if you want me to read that, it will be a while. If you want me to read anything I don't own even in paper... well, you had better be very compelling, or the book had better be easily available and cheap.
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I see we are once again back to awesome nature description; there wasn't a lot of that in the last one. Here is Frytha (a Saxon) at age five and the Normans are burning her home. This is going to be another depressing one, isn't it?
And Frytha ate whatever Grim gave her to eat, and lay down and got up, and walked or climbed onto his back to be carried, just as he told her; and never thought to ask, or even wonder, where they were going, because she never really understood that they were going anywhere, only that the world had fallen to pieces and that it was very cold among the ruins.
Yeah. Whoo. Frytha is not having a good time, and Grim is turning her over to the Jarl Buthar, who is a complete stranger to her but is at least not Norman. And Frytha has now met Bjorn, who is a couple years older than her (so, what, seven?) and they are going to be instant BFFs in the way of many Sutcliff plots:
"My name is Bjorn the Bear, and my father’s name was Bjorn the Bear, but mostly people call me 'Bear-cub' yet awhile,” said the boy, and flung an arm over her neck. "I shall call you Fryth, but nobody else must. And nobody shall hurt you again, excepting me."
...excepting him? Uh.
(Also my ebook includes the word Xljaf. That's great. I paid money for this, guys, could you not have run a spellcheck?)
No, wait, now Bjorn is seven and he has to sleep with the boys and Frytha is sad. Also there is more Glorious Nature Porn. And Bjorn wants to be a harper and the harper (who is, BTW, old enough to have fought at Hastings) isn't even too mad when Bjorn borrows his harp. And what the hell, is this Sword Song?
Haethcyn nodded. "When Bjorn Sigurdson came west-overseas from Stavanger with the Dragon ships--that was in the days of Harald Fairhair--he took to wife a woman of the people who ruled this land aforetime. Seemingly it was a fierce wooing, for she was of proud stock, and she yielded at last half unwillingly, but yield she did; and came to spin beside his new-lit hearth-fire over yonder among the Eskdale Falls. She was your foremother."
I mean, the name could be a coincidence. I guess. Yield unwillingly. Blech.
Anyway. Plot plot. The Red King is coming north, and Frytha is watching people forge swords. Ah, the Shield Ring in the title is the name for the settlement. Now Frytha and Bjorn are making twig boats and have met Ari Knudson and they are talking about how someone named Ranulf Le Meschin tortures people. Suddenly now we have switched POV to Gille, Buthar's son, so that we can watch Buthar say they should surrender to the Red King, and Ari offers to bring the message. The Normans, being even more treacherous than the Saxons on the Sutcliff Scale of Evil People, kill the messengers and there's a big battle. Buthar and Aikin (whoever Aikin is; there are a lot of people in this book) swear vengeance.
And then we get Frytha's POV on finding out all this, and there is some Nature Porn and some very nicely described feelings:
For a while she stood quite still, feeling sick too, and lost, and coldly afraid, because if that could happen to someone who had been with her and Bjorn up the Sell Beck, nothing was safe or certain in the world any more, and the high, steadfast fells had lost their strength to shut out the dreadful things.
She goes off to find Bjorn, who has run away to ponder such things as whether he would break under torture and tell the Normans where this secret fortress they're living in is. Given the way this book is going so far, I'm sure we'll get to find out. Bjorn plays some music everyone likes -- by the way, the description in this book is really excellent -- and asks if he can go off to war, now that he's old enough. (He's almost 15 now.) So they give him his dead father's dirk and Dolphin Ring and he goes off to try to hold the road to Rafnglas with a bunch of other men:
No, Bjorn thought, they could not hurry the moon. Far up the dale, Heron Crags were beginning to darken as the light slid behind them, but the dale itself was still full of white radiance. Odd, how the moon drained the world of color; the red sandstone of the ancient rampart was ash-gray where the moonlight fell, black in the shadow. He wished the moon would hurry; he wished that he could hear the others. The cold taste of defeat was in his mouth, and he felt most horribly alone; suddenly half aware in his aloneness of some difference between himself and his kind--between himself and Gille, for instance. Some difference that had come down to him perhaps with his ring from that far-back foremother out of Wales.
He moved his hand on the spear-shaft, and felt the pressure of the battered ring on his finger. It had been rather loose for him when he first put it on but it was not so loose now. It must have been made in the first place for a hand that was narrower than his; but it had been made bigger; you could see the place where more gold had been let into the shaft. He wondered if that meant that it had been made for a woman, but somehow he did not think so; it had not the look of a woman's ring. Perhaps the people of Romeburg had narrower hands than the Northmen; that would explain it. Suddenly he wondered if someone wearing his ring when it was bright and new, someone with narrower hands than his, yet who was part of him in some way, had come this way before; had helped, maybe, to build the road that had gone back to the wild so long ago, and looked down over Eskdale from the red sandstone fort, when it too was new.
Just for a moment, the thought made him catch his breath as though he were looking down an unbearable length and loneliness of time, and the wind blew cold out of its emptiness; and then it was oddly comforting, and made him feel less alone.
See? The writing is totally better than the last book. Anyway, they hold the road and he fights a Norman. Later on Bjorn goes to a tavern to pick up some new harp strings and overhears some drunk Normans talking about invading them, if they can find them. The plan everyone comes up with is to build a nice new road for them, but make it go somewhere else. Because that's a plan. I guess. And then old Unna has a vision that there will be fighting, meaning of course that there definitely will be.
The Red King dies; there's a new king, Henry. There's a wedding and Bjorn sings a sad song and then everyone finds out the Normans are coming closer. All then men go off to fight, leaving Frytha and the harper, who tells her he thinks the day is coming when she'll get to fight too. There's some fighting, anyway, and more nature porn, and when Frytha goes to retrieve a lost horse she finds a Norman. He's kind of a crazy Norman, and Bjorn convinces everyone not to kill him because apparently it's bad luck to kill crazy people.
So we get a page of Le Meschin's POV, so we can learn about his battle plans -- yeah, you can tell this is an early book -- and it turns out the crazy Norman was just upset, and also has amnesia. And Frytha gets to help make a new raven banner for fighting -- because serious fights call for serious raven banners -- while listening to the harpist sing about Beowulf, because everyone likes Beowulf. And a messenger comes to tell them the Normans are even closer.
So Bjorn volunteers to go spying, because he knows a bit of Norman, and also because he's a harpist and people like harpists. It will totally work, except I bet it won't. Frytha starts thinking how it's like Beowulf going off to face the dragon and even he didn't do it alone (he didn't?) because his shield bearer went with him, so she's going to go too.
There are a lot of Normans, and Frytha covets their amber earrings. Bjorn talks his way into being taken on with the people going to Le Meschin by helping out with one of their horses, and Frytha claims to be his squire. They complain that using horses in battle is Norman trickery. They do some spying, but they are found out when Bjorn is called to play for Le Meschin and one of the knights there recognizes him as the dude he fought up by Rafnglas, because he has the Dolphin Ring. Uh oh. They torture Bjorn, who says nothing, and are about to torture her when they have to stop because the good guys are attacking.
Eventually they get free and get home and report their spying and how they're totally outnumbered. Bjorn still has one good hand to fight with and Erland who used to hate him offers to be his shield bearer. Bjorn gives Frytha the ring to hang onto while he fights. So there's a great big battle on the Road to Nowhere (Aikin dies) and they kill the Normans (and their Crazy Norman, who wanders in) and Frytha fights too, with bow and dagger. She and Bjorn both survive, actually, and she gives him his ring back. And the river is running red just like Unna saw in her vision, but that's because it's sunset.
So Bjorn is feverish and hallucinating that he's back being tortured by the Normans, something something dragon, and Aikin gets an epic funeral. When Bjorn gets better he and Frytha hang out and eat raspberries and play music and they are going to live happily ever after, the end.
I am now done with the Dolphin Ring series.
I suppose that the non-Ring books are going to be more depressing as I will no longer be able to use "who has the Dolphin Ring and have they already reproduced?" as a diagnostic for determining whether there will be at least one survivor.
What was up with the Crazy Norman?
Also, this book was really good; why did no one tell me that this one was so good? I am not sure there is any fanfic I would want in particular about this book, because pretty much everything I would want was explored during the story. It is, however, just a really fun read, full of excitement and pretty good plotting and excellent nature porn and, wow, actual female POV characters who are made of awesomeness. (Why could Sutcliff not keep writing female characters, again?)
Basically, yeah, I ♥ Frytha and Bjorn.
Yay Beowulf themes. I guess everyone likes Beowulf. Even the Normans. And, yeah, yeah, Bjorn has to go face the dragon and is set on fire (twice if you count the fever), A+ for Extremely Subtle Use of Theme, Sutcliff. Though, hey, I suppose there's no reason it has to be subtle.
I am not sure what else to say about this, other than that it was great fun and I am confused as to why it is not more popular in fandom.
Up next: This is the end of the Dolphin Ring series. I am at this point going to take a little break from reading Sutcliff and go read things that I am not making myself write huge posts about. Because eight in a row was a little bit much.
I do, however, have access to other Sutcliff novels that I can also read! After a break! These are the remaining Sutcliff books I currently have on my Kindle: Brother Dusty Feet, Knight's Fee, The Mark of the Horse Lord, Outcast. I am inclined to favor books set during the Roman era, so I am leaning toward reading one of the last two first, but you are welcome to try to convince me of any order you like. I will also have Beowulf: Dragonslayer and The Hound of Ulster when they are republished next month, but obviously I don't have them yet. I have a paper copy of The Shining Company, but it is packed away in a box and I have not found it yet, so if you want me to read that, it will be a while. If you want me to read anything I don't own even in paper... well, you had better be very compelling, or the book had better be easily available and cheap.
Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
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