This is tied for my favorite Sutcliff, and hardly anyone seems to have read it. It's set in Wales around AD 600, and based on Y Gododdin, so I do not think it is a spoiler to say that the body count is very, very high.
It follows Prosper, son of a minor chieftain, as he becomes a shieldbearer to one of the Gododdin princes, Cynan Mac Clydno. The first part of the book is, I feel, echoing aspects of Eagle of the Ninth, only here the potential OT3 is less lopsided--Prosper and Luned have their kinship bond (they're cousins), Luned and Conn are in love but separated by station, and Conn and Prosper are BFFs. And Prosper is a bit more aware than Marcus that Conn being his bondman is something that impairs their friendship. Lots of gorgeous evocative descriptions of their lives, with echoes of the Roman past here.
And then the rest is adventure and tragedy! TSC is written in the first person, almost as if an older Prosper is looking back on his life and telling it to the reader, like a bard--and there are intriguing hints of what he may have done post-book. There are the usual cast of amazing secondary characters, besides Prosper, Conn, Luned, and Cynan, the most interesting is probably the bard Aneirin, who supposedly wrote Y Gododdin.
I don't want to say too much about the ending, which would be spoilery, but there's wonderful fic potential here, and not just for the slash and OT3-inclined. And it is, I feel, one of Sutcliff's most beautifully written books.
The Shining Company
It follows Prosper, son of a minor chieftain, as he becomes a shieldbearer to one of the Gododdin princes, Cynan Mac Clydno. The first part of the book is, I feel, echoing aspects of Eagle of the Ninth, only here the potential OT3 is less lopsided--Prosper and Luned have their kinship bond (they're cousins), Luned and Conn are in love but separated by station, and Conn and Prosper are BFFs. And Prosper is a bit more aware than Marcus that Conn being his bondman is something that impairs their friendship. Lots of gorgeous evocative descriptions of their lives, with echoes of the Roman past here.
And then the rest is adventure and tragedy! TSC is written in the first person, almost as if an older Prosper is looking back on his life and telling it to the reader, like a bard--and there are intriguing hints of what he may have done post-book. There are the usual cast of amazing secondary characters, besides Prosper, Conn, Luned, and Cynan, the most interesting is probably the bard Aneirin, who supposedly wrote Y Gododdin.
I don't want to say too much about the ending, which would be spoilery, but there's wonderful fic potential here, and not just for the slash and OT3-inclined. And it is, I feel, one of Sutcliff's most beautifully written books.