The Lantern Bearers

I brought this book with me a month ago for my first trip to London a month ago and reread it for likely the fourth time in 40 years under an oak tree in Hyde Park. Ranking along with Flowers for Adonis as one of Sutcliff's most bleak but sweeping books, The Lantern Bearers features a a classically great and complex hero who is a tough, thorny, quiet brooder caught between old and new worlds. As both the young romantic risking all to give his world one last blaze of hope and the bitter general fighting to hold back the enemy tide, Aquila is an engrossing study of a man trying to make sense of his duties to his families, friends, and ruler. The choices he is forced to make at the twilight of British-Roman England are heartbreaking but of a piece with the man and his world.

Arguably the most complete of Sutcliff's novels as she weaves the bits of recorded history into a tale that pulls together an important era for England, this a hard but rewarding novel. Full of great settings including the Roman lighthouse, Saxon war camp, British mountain stronghold, and various battlefields, the book also includes the dolphin ring that ties together a string of Sutcliff's novels from early Roman Britain to Norman England as she highlights the many peoples who made England.

This book has moved me as few books can. It starts out a little slow, as most of Sutcliff's books do, but it didn't take long for the pace to pick up. However, this book is not about action, it's about emotion. I keenly felt every single thing that the main character, Aquila, felt. I was caught up in his every emotion, urging him in my heart to go in the right direction. Normally, I don't much appreciate love stories, but the one in this book was different. I was urging him on, pleading with him to love her. I was close to tears several times; yet this is not a very emotional book, by most standards. In fact, Aquila is often the very absence of emotion. Yet somehow, Sutcliff still manages for you, the reader, to feel the emotion. I don't think there is a single book that I would recommend more; I could read it again and again.