Operation Read All the Sutcliff: Frontier Wolf

[sineala]

I love this book. You know how sometimes you think you will never find a book that is new to you that you love as much as the books you loved when you were, oh, fourteen, because now you are a cynical bitter adult and you just cannot love another book as much as everything you loved that has all that nostalgia bound into it

Comments

[osprey_archer]

Wheee Frontier Wolf squee! There's so much here, I'm not sure where to start my comment.

Like you I find that rather odd how happy this book makes me, given that almost everyone dies. Maybe it's because of the happy ending? But The Lantern Bearers and The Shining Company also have happy endings (or at least happyish), and I found them pretty grim. (I'm curious to hear what you think of The Lantern Bearers!)

And the Orion passage you quoted is lovely. One of the things that makes Frontier Wolf such a good book, I think, is the way that the nature porn and plot and character development and culture clashes and and and everything are so neatly braided together: it's not just that they're all evenly distributed through the book, but they're all happening at the same time, sometimes

[sineala]

I'm about a quarter of the way into the Lantern Bearers, and so far it's (a) well, this is depressing and (b) I wish I'd read the Odyssey.

One of the things that makes Frontier Wolf such a good book, I think, is the way that the nature porn and plot and character development and culture clashes and and and everything are so neatly braided together: it's not just that they're all evenly distributed through the book, but they're all happening at the same time, sometimes.

Yes, exactly. I think this is what I'm trying to get at when I keep saying it's tightly plotted -- it's not just the plot, it's everything, and it all just works together really well.

Aww, Lucius. I would read either of those, if you ever wanted to write them.

[osprey_archer]

I would probably write the "stop breaking your vinestaff on the men's backs!" version, because it offers more scope for character development. (I have actually been vaguely planning this ever since I wrote "Caritas," where Lucius looks after Alexios when he's got a head wound. All the Lucius fic!)

Although probably the bad officer who got Lucius sent to the Frontier Wolves would say that the transfer was because Lucius was reading his Georgics when he should have been standing watch or something.

[sineala]

This sounds like the best story.