Promote your favorite Sutcliff book(s)!

[isis]

We're going to post the Sutcliff Swap rules and schedule, and open for sign-ups, Real Soon Now! But while you're waiting, why not squee about your favorite Sutcliff book in the comments here? This is your chance to remind others of that book they'd almost forgotten they'd loved, and inspire them to request or offer fanfiction or fanart for it. And if a book you haven't read sounds good to you, you can read it this summer and enjoy the fanworks created for it - and maybe you'll want to request it for Yuletide or Yuletart, or for next year's Sutcliff Swap. (Because this is going to be so much fun we will want to do it again!)

We're doing this on Dreamwidth only, so that we can use comment subject lines to identify the books we're talking about. If you don't have a Dreamwidth login, you can use OpenID or comment anonymously. ETA: anonymous commenting is now enabled! OpenID works too, which will email you comment replies. Please join in and promote your favorite Sutcliff books (this post has a list of all the books), and start thinking about what you might want to request and offer for the Sutcliff Swap!

Also, if you are intrigued by the descriptions of books you haven't read yet, you should be sure to join, not just watch, the community (at either site) so you can see locked posts. *cough*

Comments

The Shining Company

[carmarthen]

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.

Re: The Shining Company

[motetus]

I finished this a few days ago and still can't stop thinking about it - it's probably my favourite Sutcliff book so far. If I'd been told how it was going to end in advance I probably would have been really pissy about it, but when it got to it, somehow it worked perfectly (gah, Cynan. The poor thing broke my heart. :(), and yes, loads of post-book fanfic possibilities!

Re: The Shining Company

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Y Gododdin is such a heartrending, heroic tale and she really does it justice in TSC. And the setting! Roman Britain all down at heel and patched up and half-forgotten fading into Wales. Almost beats 'Dawn Wind' for collapse and decay, with a brilliant fragile layer of the pride of shrinking Wales running over the top of it.

Re: The Shining Company

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Yay, comment went through this time!