Book Review: Frontier Wolf
Jun. 14th, 2013 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerFrontier Wolf! I realized as I was writing my ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sutcliff_swap fics that I have not written a review of it, which is ridiculous, as it is in the same tier as Blood Feud and Eagle of the Ninth as one of my favorite Sutcliff books.
So the story starts with Alexios, who has just royally screwed up and gotten a lot of soldiers killed through his own bad decisions. As his uncle is a big shot, they can’t just cashier him out of the army, so instead they send him to the back of beyond to command the Frontier Wolves...provided the Frontier Wolves don’t kill him, that is. They have a habit of doing that with commanders they don’t like.
Alexios being the hero, of course they don’t end up killing him; not that we were ever worried they would, because the Frontier Wolves just seem so...nice and welcoming are not quite the words I’m looking for here, because Alexios’s first few days are rather rocky...
Companionable. This is one of my favorite Sutcliff books at least in part because of the feeling of camaraderie. A lot of Sutcliff heroes seem isolated, even intensely alone, but Alexios is surrounded by sociability. Understandably, given the catastrophe of his last command, he’s a bit unsure of himself at first. But he builds good relationships with his officers; he convinces his men to respect him. He acquires the inevitable Sutcliffian cross-cultural BFF, Cunorix, the son of the chief of a local tribe.
The exigencies of plot being what they are, naturally this idyllic state cannot last. But Alexios’s social world is rich enough that even though this book is at least an eight on a scale of one to “rocks fall, everybody dies,” Alexios is not utterly hopeless and bereft at the end.
(Imagine, in contrast, how hopelessly depressing Eagle of the Ninth would be if Esca died.)
My very favorite character is Lucius, Alexios’s strait-laced junior centenarius. He’s aChristian - this is after being a Christian in the Roman army was an asset, not a martyring offense - but Lucius is serious and sincere in his faith, not merely scrabbling for promotion. He is, indeed, almost painfully serious: he reads the Georgics when the other officers gamble, and Alexios’s first impression of Lucius is that he’s “wooden.”
But it’s not entirely so: Lucius is serious, but not so much as to stop him from gently needling the senior centenarius, Hilarion, when Hilarion’s teasing gets too unfriendly or disrespectful. Hilarion is almost the anti-Lucius - if Lucius seems too serious, Hilarion seems almost incapable of being serious at all - and yet they’ve clearly achieved a good rapport by the time Alexios arrives.
I kind of want fix-it fic for Lucius’s death, because I do love him so much - but at the same time I totally don’t. I don’t think the death is quite as integral to the story as Cunorix’s, so a fix-it fic wouldn’t necessarily undercut the whole book...but part of what makes Lucius such an appealing and tragic character is that he dies with such desperate heroism, holding the bridge to defend his troops.
But he could still be the kind of guy who would get himself cut to bits holding the bridge to defend his friends, without actually dying in the process. We could just...maim him a little. Or something.
sutcliff_swap fics that I have not written a review of it, which is ridiculous, as it is in the same tier as Blood Feud and Eagle of the Ninth as one of my favorite Sutcliff books. So the story starts with Alexios, who has just royally screwed up and gotten a lot of soldiers killed through his own bad decisions. As his uncle is a big shot, they can’t just cashier him out of the army, so instead they send him to the back of beyond to command the Frontier Wolves...provided the Frontier Wolves don’t kill him, that is. They have a habit of doing that with commanders they don’t like.
Alexios being the hero, of course they don’t end up killing him; not that we were ever worried they would, because the Frontier Wolves just seem so...nice and welcoming are not quite the words I’m looking for here, because Alexios’s first few days are rather rocky...
Companionable. This is one of my favorite Sutcliff books at least in part because of the feeling of camaraderie. A lot of Sutcliff heroes seem isolated, even intensely alone, but Alexios is surrounded by sociability. Understandably, given the catastrophe of his last command, he’s a bit unsure of himself at first. But he builds good relationships with his officers; he convinces his men to respect him. He acquires the inevitable Sutcliffian cross-cultural BFF, Cunorix, the son of the chief of a local tribe.
The exigencies of plot being what they are, naturally this idyllic state cannot last. But Alexios’s social world is rich enough that even though this book is at least an eight on a scale of one to “rocks fall, everybody dies,” Alexios is not utterly hopeless and bereft at the end.
(Imagine, in contrast, how hopelessly depressing Eagle of the Ninth would be if Esca died.)
My very favorite character is Lucius, Alexios’s strait-laced junior centenarius. He’s aChristian - this is after being a Christian in the Roman army was an asset, not a martyring offense - but Lucius is serious and sincere in his faith, not merely scrabbling for promotion. He is, indeed, almost painfully serious: he reads the Georgics when the other officers gamble, and Alexios’s first impression of Lucius is that he’s “wooden.”
But it’s not entirely so: Lucius is serious, but not so much as to stop him from gently needling the senior centenarius, Hilarion, when Hilarion’s teasing gets too unfriendly or disrespectful. Hilarion is almost the anti-Lucius - if Lucius seems too serious, Hilarion seems almost incapable of being serious at all - and yet they’ve clearly achieved a good rapport by the time Alexios arrives.
I kind of want fix-it fic for Lucius’s death, because I do love him so much - but at the same time I totally don’t. I don’t think the death is quite as integral to the story as Cunorix’s, so a fix-it fic wouldn’t necessarily undercut the whole book...but part of what makes Lucius such an appealing and tragic character is that he dies with such desperate heroism, holding the bridge to defend his troops.
But he could still be the kind of guy who would get himself cut to bits holding the bridge to defend his friends, without actually dying in the process. We could just...maim him a little. Or something.
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Date: 2013-06-14 07:22 pm (UTC)(So excited about the Lucius fic in Swap this year!)
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Date: 2013-06-15 03:47 am (UTC)And Lucius is like, "Is he actually talking without joking at all?" *swoons* (Mostly from blood loss. But a little from Hilarion.)