Book Review: Sword at Sunset
Jan. 11th, 2014 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI think Sword at Sunset may have officially edged out The Lantern Bearers as the most depressing Sutcliff book ever. Not only does Artos spend most of the book miserable, alone, and interminably describing battle tactics, but unlike Aquila and Ness, Artos and his bride Guenhumara never really manage to come to any kind of emotional equilibrium, in part because of Artos’s massive issues with women.
One could argue that many Sutcliff heroes have issues with women, but Artos’s are off the charts. He’s basically incapable of mentioning or thinking about women without being denigratory and also slightly panicked about how their mere presence will DESTROY THE BOND OF THE COMPANIONS by introducing jealousy and infighting.
He yearns to make his whole army (who are already called the Companions) into a Theban band where the soldiers are each others lovers. Considering a pair of his soldiers who are lovers, he muses, “it did keep them in fighting trim, each of them striving to be worthy of his friend, each to make the other proud of him; and I have known the love of a yellow-haired girl to make life too sweet and unnerve a man’s sword hand.”
Whereas if the Companions just sleep with each other, they will magically fall into fated pairs! And no one will ever jealously scheme steal someone else’s boyfriend, or suffer unrequited love, or do any of those other things that cause discord. Obviously.
(I think this is just how Artos thinks relationships between men work. For instance, when Artos talks about his meeting with his BFF Bedwyr, he says he felt a “mood of intense waiting, the certainty that something, someone was waiting for me in Narbo Martius - or that I was waiting for them. So might a man feel, waiting for the woman he loved.” Not only is Bedwyr Artos’s beloved, but their love was mystically fated.)
Specifically, the woman who he doesn’t know is his half-sister drugs him, seduces him, and then is all “Haha! I am your half-sister Ygerna and our incestuous union will leave you cursed forever, and also someday I’m going to send the fruit of our union to you to destroy your kingdom, BWAHAHA.”
(I think this scores about an eleven on the one-to-ten scale of “overly complicated villain plans.” So many things could go wrong! What if he stabs her after this revelation? What if she’s not pregnant? What if the baby’s a girl? What if the baby dies young? What if the baby is a boy, and lives to grow up, but is totally disinterested in complicated revenge schemes and runs away to be a harper? What if he is interested in revenge schemes but is totally incompetent at plotting?)
Anyway, Artos feels totally violated and has massive trust issues with women and also becomes impotent, and basically never recovers. This is one of the reasons the book is so miserable.
And while we’re on the topic of Ygerna, I think it’s fairly heavily implied that she sexually abuses her son Medraut.
One might imagine that Artos’s yearnings to create a Theban band would also make the slashiness level of the book off the charts, but actually it’s fairly low for a Sutcliff book. There’s the line about Artos & Bedwyr’s meeting that I already quoted, and a line near the end where Artos compares his friendship with Bedwyr to David & Jonathan and mentions that he would like to call Bedwyr by love names that men don’t use with each other, and...that’s really it. They don’t spend much time together. I really think Bedwyr has more chemistry with Guenhumara.
But! But! Even they are not allowed to be happy! They have an adulterous liaison (which, incidentally, destroys the shredded remains of Artos’s ability to trust anyone ever again, male or female), for which Artos banishes them to the mountains. Bedwyr comes back for the final battle and is all, “Guenhumara and I were miserable in the mountains, we mostly sat around and thought about how bad we felt about betraying you.”
At this point my mind cracked under the strain of an entire five hundred page book covering a whole lifetime worth of misery. I decided that Bedwyr and Guenhumara were clearly blissful, dammit, and Bedwyr is lying about it to Artos because he knows Artos is heading into his final battle and doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, because Bedwyr is a good BFF even if he doesn’t return Artos’s unrequited crush and realizes that Artos’s fragile emotional stability would probably crack under the strain of imagining Bedwyr and Guenhumara frolicking through meadows together, sparing barely a thought to Artos’s misery.
I suspect that after Artos’s death, Bedwyr fetches Guenhumara back out of the nunnery and they go off to frolic in the mountains some more. I’m not sure if the timeline works for this, but I also like to think that Guenhumara & Bedwyr had a child or two after they got banished together.
Guenhumara was so devastated when her daughter by Artos died; she deserves a second chance. I want her to be happy! I want anyone in this book to be happy, because Artos is clearly incapable of happiness!
Speaking of Guenhumara’s daughter by Artos: I think Guenhumara’s insistent belief that the Little Dark People cursed her child is a way of dealing with her own guilt: I think she thinks (and is perhaps right to think?) that the baby came early because she insisted on traveling with Artos, and that probably contributed to the baby’s later weakness and death.
Of course that’s an intolerable burden to bear, so she displaces the guilt onto the LDP.
One could argue that many Sutcliff heroes have issues with women, but Artos’s are off the charts. He’s basically incapable of mentioning or thinking about women without being denigratory and also slightly panicked about how their mere presence will DESTROY THE BOND OF THE COMPANIONS by introducing jealousy and infighting.
He yearns to make his whole army (who are already called the Companions) into a Theban band where the soldiers are each others lovers. Considering a pair of his soldiers who are lovers, he muses, “it did keep them in fighting trim, each of them striving to be worthy of his friend, each to make the other proud of him; and I have known the love of a yellow-haired girl to make life too sweet and unnerve a man’s sword hand.”
Whereas if the Companions just sleep with each other, they will magically fall into fated pairs! And no one will ever jealously scheme steal someone else’s boyfriend, or suffer unrequited love, or do any of those other things that cause discord. Obviously.
(I think this is just how Artos thinks relationships between men work. For instance, when Artos talks about his meeting with his BFF Bedwyr, he says he felt a “mood of intense waiting, the certainty that something, someone was waiting for me in Narbo Martius - or that I was waiting for them. So might a man feel, waiting for the woman he loved.” Not only is Bedwyr Artos’s beloved, but their love was mystically fated.)
Specifically, the woman who he doesn’t know is his half-sister drugs him, seduces him, and then is all “Haha! I am your half-sister Ygerna and our incestuous union will leave you cursed forever, and also someday I’m going to send the fruit of our union to you to destroy your kingdom, BWAHAHA.”
(I think this scores about an eleven on the one-to-ten scale of “overly complicated villain plans.” So many things could go wrong! What if he stabs her after this revelation? What if she’s not pregnant? What if the baby’s a girl? What if the baby dies young? What if the baby is a boy, and lives to grow up, but is totally disinterested in complicated revenge schemes and runs away to be a harper? What if he is interested in revenge schemes but is totally incompetent at plotting?)
Anyway, Artos feels totally violated and has massive trust issues with women and also becomes impotent, and basically never recovers. This is one of the reasons the book is so miserable.
And while we’re on the topic of Ygerna, I think it’s fairly heavily implied that she sexually abuses her son Medraut.
One might imagine that Artos’s yearnings to create a Theban band would also make the slashiness level of the book off the charts, but actually it’s fairly low for a Sutcliff book. There’s the line about Artos & Bedwyr’s meeting that I already quoted, and a line near the end where Artos compares his friendship with Bedwyr to David & Jonathan and mentions that he would like to call Bedwyr by love names that men don’t use with each other, and...that’s really it. They don’t spend much time together. I really think Bedwyr has more chemistry with Guenhumara.
But! But! Even they are not allowed to be happy! They have an adulterous liaison (which, incidentally, destroys the shredded remains of Artos’s ability to trust anyone ever again, male or female), for which Artos banishes them to the mountains. Bedwyr comes back for the final battle and is all, “Guenhumara and I were miserable in the mountains, we mostly sat around and thought about how bad we felt about betraying you.”
At this point my mind cracked under the strain of an entire five hundred page book covering a whole lifetime worth of misery. I decided that Bedwyr and Guenhumara were clearly blissful, dammit, and Bedwyr is lying about it to Artos because he knows Artos is heading into his final battle and doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, because Bedwyr is a good BFF even if he doesn’t return Artos’s unrequited crush and realizes that Artos’s fragile emotional stability would probably crack under the strain of imagining Bedwyr and Guenhumara frolicking through meadows together, sparing barely a thought to Artos’s misery.
I suspect that after Artos’s death, Bedwyr fetches Guenhumara back out of the nunnery and they go off to frolic in the mountains some more. I’m not sure if the timeline works for this, but I also like to think that Guenhumara & Bedwyr had a child or two after they got banished together.
Guenhumara was so devastated when her daughter by Artos died; she deserves a second chance. I want her to be happy! I want anyone in this book to be happy, because Artos is clearly incapable of happiness!
Speaking of Guenhumara’s daughter by Artos: I think Guenhumara’s insistent belief that the Little Dark People cursed her child is a way of dealing with her own guilt: I think she thinks (and is perhaps right to think?) that the baby came early because she insisted on traveling with Artos, and that probably contributed to the baby’s later weakness and death.
Of course that’s an intolerable burden to bear, so she displaces the guilt onto the LDP.
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no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 05:02 pm (UTC)(I think it's also implied that Bedwyr's mother was abusive, although not necessarily sexually.)
IDK, I found it a really interesting book, but I'm not sure that I liked it. I was so frustrated with everyone's complete inability to communicate.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 11:52 pm (UTC)I think perhaps Utha raped Ygerna's mother, which might account for the fact that Ygerna has put so much thought into how to sexually traumatize Artos. This doesn't make the "and then I will raise our evil incest baby to destroy you!" part of her supervillain plan a very good plan, but maybe it makes more sense psychologically?
no subject
Date: 2014-01-12 12:25 am (UTC)maybe it makes more sense psychologically?
Could be!
I have super-mixed feelings about that book and may never reread it.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 07:14 pm (UTC)In my opinion, any villain plot which involves actions done as an adult by someone who is currently either a fetus or a baby is an automatic 11. All villain plots which involve the phrase "I'll get pregnant, and that'll show him!!!" are an automatic 5, at least, depending on what they think that will do. If it's "force him to pay child support," they can stay at 5.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 08:16 pm (UTC)But that was one of my problems with SAS--that everyone else was a real person, grounded in a real historical context, and Ygerna and Medraut are like these cardboard villains out of a myth. They don't make sense.
*This is the only version where I feel like it's framed psychologically as a rape that traumatizes Artos, and I do think it's interesting for that, because this kind of rape narrative about a man is something I've hardly ever seen.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-11 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-12 05:18 am (UTC)(OK, Aquila wasn't outright misogynist, but his bitterness toward his sister for doing what she had to do to survive, and his treatment of Ness early on in their marriage, made me dislike him outright.)
Thanks for the review. I think I'm going to delete SaS from my Kindle, because… I just can't handle Sutcliff's internalized misogyny in that large a dose.
I suspect that after Artos’s death, Bedwyr fetches Guenhumara back out of the nunnery and they go off to frolic in the mountains some more.
I hope so, and I hope someone has written fic or will write fic about it, because it's not worth my while to read the book just to be able to write it.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-12 07:09 pm (UTC)But it's still not pleasant to read.