Book review: The Shining Company by Rosemary Sutcliff

The sixtieth book I read in 2015 was The Shining Company by Rosemary Sutcliff.  While not part of the Roman Britain trilogy which The Eagle of the Ninth opened, it is a historical novel set on the same island some centuries later, and it's interesting to see how the place names have changed from the map in that book to this one.

Like The Eagle of the Ninth, this book opens with a set of three characters: two boys, one the slave of the other, and a girl.  For a while I was afraid that the character development would parallel that of the earlier book -- that she has a "formula" -- but the triangle in The Shining Company heads in different directions than Marcus, Esca, and Cottia.

Prosper, the younger son of a chieftan, lives in the absence left behind by the Roman Legions, his closest companions his bondservant Conn and his kinswoman Luned.  His childhood is irreversibly marked by two encounters; one with a traveling merchant, Phanes of Syracuse, and his tales of the emperor's court in Constantinople, and the second with Prince Gorthyn who comes to his father's lands to hunt a rare white hart and inspires a lifelong loyalty.  When Prosper comes of age, Gorthyn remembers the boy's impulsive request to ride at his side and takes him as shieldbearer when the great king Mynyddog calls for warriors to repel the Saxons.  Based on the medieval Welsh poem, Y Goddodin, the remainder of the novel imagines the preparation for and carrying out of the Gododdin's attack on Catraeth.

While I didn't enjoy it as much as The Eagle of the Ninth, The Shining Company was an interesting and affecting read and shines some (speculative) light on a period of history about which I know very little.