The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff

The Eagle Of The Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Before I picked this book up, I had gathered two points from, respectively, the title and the edges of assorted flailings by my friends: (1) that it was about baseball or something, and (2) that it was about a couple of boys who love each other very, very, very much and who have talks about their innermost feelings and so on.

Turns out, not about baseball! Actually about Romans, which makes a certain amount of sense, since a book about Romans is one of the few things with a decent chance of being more homoerotic than a book about baseball.

Anyway. A lovely, deliberately young sort of adventure about Marcus the newly disabled former centurion and Esca his British tribesman slave and a quest for the lost standard of a lost legion. The whole thing feels like – well, here, have a sentence. “He had seen these rolling woods in their winter bareness dapple like a partridge’s breast, he had seen the first outbreaking of the blackthorn foam, and now the full green flame of spring was running through the forest and the wild cherry trees stood like lit candles along the woodland ways.” The whole thing feels like that: brightly colored, bold strokes, lovely from the right distance. Oh, and the phrase “innermost feelings” actually gets used, not even kidding.

But what I actually liked best about this book was how it played its cards like a straight-talking story of nationalism and loyalty. But how actually all the gears underneath were working for something else. About being who you are wherever the world washes you up, whether that be a Roman deprived of his military life by injury, or tribesman stolen away to slavery and despair and then to something better, or roman soldier left alone in the wilds of tribal Alba with no way home. About choosing your place by the people around you, and living in it. It won't hold up to too close a scrutiny, but I think it wasn't meant to.



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