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Nov. 30th, 2018 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
princesselwenSutcliff recommendation.
The Mark of the Horse Lord.
TW for suicide. highlight to read.
An ex-gladiator is brought in as a substitute for a blinded Scottish chieftain, and battles an evil Pictish queen who has some traits in common with Viviane. (She's the head of a matriarchal earth-goddess-worshipping religion, and she has a thing for incest, given that she tries to marry her own nephew.) This story has a lot of focus on the religious conflict between the earth-goddess worshippers and the sky-god ones, but neither side is presented as all bad or all good. Its a lot more complicated than that. The protagonist also has an interesting romance with the villainess' daughter (who actually turns out to be nice), which is more developed than the romances in some of Sutcliff's other books. But the reason I stuck this behind a spoiler tag comes with the theme of the sacrificial king, which gets developed throughout the novel--the idea that the king choosing to die for the people protects them. At the end, the protagonist gets captured by the Romans, and can only be ransomed by the tribe's young men joining the Roman Legions and getting sent abroad (which would cripple a tribe that has already lost many of them in the recent war). So rather than stay in captivity, which he doesn't want because he grew up in slavery, or purchase his freedom at the cost of his tribe, he chooses to kill himself so his death will protect the people. (He does have a potential heir because his wife is pregnant at the time.) And that's where the book ends. Its a good book, but I understand why some readers wouldn't want to read it.
The Mark of the Horse Lord.
TW for suicide. highlight to read.
An ex-gladiator is brought in as a substitute for a blinded Scottish chieftain, and battles an evil Pictish queen who has some traits in common with Viviane. (She's the head of a matriarchal earth-goddess-worshipping religion, and she has a thing for incest, given that she tries to marry her own nephew.) This story has a lot of focus on the religious conflict between the earth-goddess worshippers and the sky-god ones, but neither side is presented as all bad or all good. Its a lot more complicated than that. The protagonist also has an interesting romance with the villainess' daughter (who actually turns out to be nice), which is more developed than the romances in some of Sutcliff's other books. But the reason I stuck this behind a spoiler tag comes with the theme of the sacrificial king, which gets developed throughout the novel--the idea that the king choosing to die for the people protects them. At the end, the protagonist gets captured by the Romans, and can only be ransomed by the tribe's young men joining the Roman Legions and getting sent abroad (which would cripple a tribe that has already lost many of them in the recent war). So rather than stay in captivity, which he doesn't want because he grew up in slavery, or purchase his freedom at the cost of his tribe, he chooses to kill himself so his death will protect the people. (He does have a potential heir because his wife is pregnant at the time.) And that's where the book ends. Its a good book, but I understand why some readers wouldn't want to read it.
