The Lantern Bearers

I brought this book with me a month ago for my first trip to London a month ago and reread it for likely the fourth time in 40 years under an oak tree in Hyde Park. Ranking along with Flowers for Adonis as one of Sutcliff's most bleak but sweeping books, The Lantern Bearers features a a classically great and complex hero who is a tough, thorny, quiet brooder caught between old and new worlds. As both the young romantic risking all to give his world one last blaze of hope and the bitter general fighting to hold back the enemy tide, Aquila is an engrossing study of a man trying to make sense of his duties to his families, friends, and ruler. The choices he is forced to make at the twilight of British-Roman England are heartbreaking but of a piece with the man and his world. Arguably the most complete of Sutcliff's novels as she weaves the bits of recorded history into a tale that pulls together an important era for England, this a hard but rewarding novel. Full of great settings including the Roman lighthouse, Saxon war camp, British mountain stronghold, and various battlefields, the book also includes the dolphin ring that ties together a string of Sutcliff's novels from early Roman Britain to Norman England as she highlights the many peoples who made England.

This is a book that I have to force myself to read, despite the fact that I love it dearly. The first time that I ever read it I was reduced to tears several times and even now, almost twenty years later, I still have to steel myself before dipping into it again. This is a book about a lost world, the moments when the Roman Empire in the West flickered and died and the black cloak of the Dark Ages descended, almost swamping the light of civilisation. This is a book about the start of the fall of Roman Britain as it began to fall under the sway of the Saxon barbarians. This is a book about a small group of people who, as in the title, became lanternbearers, trying to keep alight the flame of civilisation as the darkness and chaos of the Dark Ages threatened to swamp Britain. It is not a cheerful book for obvious reasons, and as such is more for older children who are starting to look into darker literature. It is a book that deals in issues such as anger, despair, revenge, fortitude and resolution. It is also a book about loss, about what Britain lost when the English came, and speaking as a Welshman it has more than once reduced me to tears.

Although the third book in the trilogy about the family with the dolphin ring, The Lantern Bearers is maybe for more mature readers.(Notice I said more mature, NOT older.) One of the things I love most about this book is that, even though it is sad, the sadness is REAL, not Romeo-and-Juliet type, with a tragic ending. The ending is not exactly hopeful about the future of England, but Aquila has finally found inner peace. However, the middle, in which Aquila is a slave of the Jutes (not Saxons, that's just what the British called all the invaders), and when he- oops! Don't want to give away the story!- is very bitter, and that's why it's perhaps for MORE MATURE readers. This book is one of Rosemary Sutcliff's best.

I am an avid adult reader of Arthurian legends. I read this book after hearing it is a prequel to The Sword at Sunset, also by Rosemary Sutcliff, and I loved it. I am captivated by the romance and chivalry of this passionate era in our history - and also by the great battle scenes as described by the better authors of this legend (Bernard Cornwell in particular). This book kept my adult interest and made me more anxious than ever to get to The Sword of Sunset...a continuation of the story line in The Lantern Bearers where a young Artos is introduced to us - and by the end of the book can be recognized as the great King Arthur to come.

Set in the brief Romano-Celtic twilight between the end of the Roman Empire and the creation of Anglo-Saxon Britain, this is the story of Aquila, a Roman soldier who chooses to stay among his adopted people. However, his world crashes to pieces when he and his sister are enslaved by the Saxons, their father slain and their farm destroyed. Aquila eventually escapes, but his sister, now married with a Saxon son, makes her own choice to stay with the invaders. Aquila is embittered and angry, and the remainder of the story is his redemption, helped by a kindly priest, his celtic wife from an arranged maarriage, and the Romano-British leader, Ambrosius, whose friend he becomes. I first read this book in my early teens, and it has stayed with me ever since. The themes of irreparable loss, vengance and redemption are quite adult, but not at such a level that adult or teen cannot appreciate them. Sutcliffe brilliantly captures the heroic twilight of the Dark Ages, and makes it utterly convincing. She also wrote a longer sequel called "Sword at Sunset" (use the out-of-print service) based on the Arthur legends - Aquila appears as a minor (older) character, Arthur appears as a young warrior Artos in "Lantern Bearers". Both books are highly recommended for adults, "The Lantern Bearers" for teens and adults.