Entry tags:
The Shining Company (Sutcliff)
Note the first: I apparently always want to add an extra e to Sutcliff's name. Sigh.
Note the second: Oh, hey, by the way, rarewomen happened and ALSO DIDO FIC, including SF Dido!AU!(Here is where I squee about it — if you don't know the Aeneid, it's okay, you need only this post and this to read them — and here’s my reveal post and more nattering on about the Greek Myth SF AU (spoilers!).)
4/5. This book sat on my shelf for a month because I’ve only read Sutcliff’s Roman stuff (uh, two books) and I was kind of side-eyeing her taking on a Celtic subject. Um. Sometimes I’m kind of stupid. This was totally amazing: gorgeous prose and the research I expect from her and allllll my tropes as usual (loyalty, friendship, partnership, hard choices, etc.) and what the heck it’s a retelling of Y Goddodin. (I am thick. I did not realize this until Aneirin showed up.) WHAT. I think the last half of the book I kept on going !!!! Y Goddodin!!!!
I mean, I guess that if one looked at it rationally, one could come up with a lot of things that might be slightly obnoxious. There’s essentially no plot. The plot, such as it is, is, well, the plot of Y Goddodin, which is to say the plot of every Welsh poem ever. (Hint: The Welsh don’t make poetry about their awesome victories and how they totally crushed the other guy, dude. They just don’t. This is not a super-feel-good book.) The prose is sort of partially Welsh-reminiscent and partially Roman-Britain-reminiscent, which might bother someone who was a little more involved with the era than I.
But I don’t look at this book rationally :)
Note the second: Oh, hey, by the way, rarewomen happened and ALSO DIDO FIC, including SF Dido!AU!(Here is where I squee about it — if you don't know the Aeneid, it's okay, you need only this post and this to read them — and here’s my reveal post and more nattering on about the Greek Myth SF AU (spoilers!).)
4/5. This book sat on my shelf for a month because I’ve only read Sutcliff’s Roman stuff (uh, two books) and I was kind of side-eyeing her taking on a Celtic subject. Um. Sometimes I’m kind of stupid. This was totally amazing: gorgeous prose and the research I expect from her and allllll my tropes as usual (loyalty, friendship, partnership, hard choices, etc.) and what the heck it’s a retelling of Y Goddodin. (I am thick. I did not realize this until Aneirin showed up.) WHAT. I think the last half of the book I kept on going !!!! Y Goddodin!!!!
I mean, I guess that if one looked at it rationally, one could come up with a lot of things that might be slightly obnoxious. There’s essentially no plot. The plot, such as it is, is, well, the plot of Y Goddodin, which is to say the plot of every Welsh poem ever. (Hint: The Welsh don’t make poetry about their awesome victories and how they totally crushed the other guy, dude. They just don’t. This is not a super-feel-good book.) The prose is sort of partially Welsh-reminiscent and partially Roman-Britain-reminiscent, which might bother someone who was a little more involved with the era than I.
But I don’t look at this book rationally :)
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I hadn't read any Sutcliff before, umm, six months ago? and I feel like it isn't too late, I still love them all madly -- the chief difference is that I think if I'd read them when I was a kid I would have reread them many times and they would have been a huge part of my psyche and literary landscape, the way The Dark is Rising is, or Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, or the Duane Wizard books... all of which, I think, if I'd come to them this year, I would have thought were really lovely, and then gone off and forgotten about them. Which is how I feel about Sutcliff. So I do wish I'd read her when I was a kid, but I do still love them. But YMMV.
But I wouldn't start with this one, maybe? Maybe one of the Roman Britain ones, like Eagle of the Ninth, something you're a little less likely to have strong feelings about? Because I do worry a little that with this particular one, your feelings about the original might get in the way. (Y Goddodin isn't one of the poems I know a great deal about, so I didn't have that problem.)
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I feel like her Romans are in a lot of ways more 19th/20th century Brits, though; she wasn't really trying to give them Roman attitudes, for the most part.
If there are specific things that rub you the wrong way, I've read most of the easily obtainable Sutcliffs and could probably point you at ones that avoid those things? Or, for her non-RB stuff, I recommend Blood Feud (Vikings and Byzantines), The Shield Ring (Anglo-Saxons and Normans), Knight's Fee (Normans), and possibly Blood and Sand (Ottoman Empire).
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Here's the citation on the dodgy New Age stuff. But in general the recurring themes in her 'Celts' that I side-eye on a historical front include
1) Strictly segregated Men's Side and Women's Side activities, including pre-teen boys living together communally sans female influence rather than being raised by their families (is there any evidence for this?).
2) 'Matriarchies.' On top of that 'matriarchies' that clearly value men more than women, which makes my brain hurt.
3) Marriage by faux-capture, with rapey undertones. I know there are elements of this in the Roman wedding ceremonies, but is there evidence of that among British tribes?
4) Almost everything involving the Little Dark People.
Hedgebird's entire Sutcliff tag is well worth reading through.
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(Oh, yeah. The Little Dark People. I've already had my run-ins with those. Bleah. I only put up with it because I like her language.)
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I will skip the Anglo-Saxon and Norman ones, for now, per the date range in my earlier comment :) and try Blood Feud and Blood and Sand. Thanks also for specific suggestions; her oeuvre is large enough to be blankly intimidating.
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For stuff inside your range:
The Lantern Bearers is probably safe but I can't remember all the details, Sword at Sunset is mostly tactics and stuff (although the Little Dark People may be a general dealbreaker for you--I kind of read past them) and Frontier Wolf only has a few vague references to her handwavy 'Celtic' stuff and is mostly Romans. The Silver Branch is probably fine. (Outcast is lolarious Hollywood Roman in a lot of ways that I can't deal with.) Dawn Wind is mostly Saxons, but free of handwavy Celtic stuff.
Outside your date range, I also enjoyed Simon (English Civil War), although I didn't love it. Sword Song (Vikings) is...kind of weak overall, I think, and not really one I'd recommend if not for it being outside your date range. Unfortunately, Sutcliff's strongest books are within your period of expertise, so most likely to run into stuff that will bug you.
I'd avoid Warrior Scarlet, Mark of the Horse Lord, and Sun Horse, Moon Horse as the worst offenders on the dodgy Celtic front; Eagle of the Ninth has a little bit, but is mostly safe.
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Perhaps! Now I have partially contradictory suggestions from two well-informed readers of Sutcliff :) (you and someone who had a go a few years ago). I'll have to try some of her books myself and see what happens. Thanks again.
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You might also want to check out hedgebird's general Sutcliff recs, idk (I disliked Warrior Scarlet intensely and it falls smack into the bronze age danger zone, though).
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ETA Also, the fact that the Modern Languages Association (big US umbrella org for lit/lang academics, more or less) thinks OE and ME should be collapsed together is ridonkulous. Just saying. Sixth through fifteenth is what I was responsible for during quals, plus a roll-your-own thematic reading list; most of the not-English stuff came from undergrad coursework (my alma mater had no grad-level Celtic Studies classes) and random classes I felt like auditing. The funny thing about it, and the reason I've bothered listing it out, is that I'm left with the impressionistic residue in some respects: there are some sharp features and whole chunks in memory, and then there are smears built upon certain assumptions. The latter is where I meet trouble in some fiction that starts from different assumptions, I guess?
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But yes, #2 is still the best, although I really love #3 the most (despite what I remember even as a kid thinking were terrible, terrible use of computer jargon/ideas). (Because, I mean, come on, everything after #3 is anticlimax, right? :) )
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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Men-Went-Cattraeth-John-James/dp/055317360X
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You and at least 50% of Sutcliff fandom.
TSC is and will always be one of my favorite Sutcliffs, and I'm not sure why. I mean, yeah, rocks fall, everybody dies, and there's no plot in the modern Western lit sense (but that's true of most Sutcliffs), but idk, I just love it a lot.
The prose is sort of partially Welsh-reminiscent and partially Roman-Britain-reminiscent
I think this is generally true of Sutcliff's take on Roman Britain--I think a while back someone mentioned that some of her "British" grammatical structures are basically literal translations of Welsh expressions.
(I feel like of the Sutcliffs I've read so far, she's strongest in Roman and Post-Roman Britain, although I enjoy Blood Feud a lot; her later settings are good but not quite as passionate; her pre-Roman Celtic stuff trends heavily into Questionable Archaeology territory, and runs awkwardly into her a) subscribing to Mythic Matriarchies, and b) not being very good at imagining a matriarchy that isn't misogynist as fuck.)
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I did sort of assume that some of her more archaic-sounding "British" strucutres were Welsh-derived; nice to know :)
Heh. One thing about reading Sutcliff is that one has to sort of let one's wish for female characters take a back seat... that's probably my main complaint. But it hasn't stopped me reading her :)