He had wondered, between meeting the Old One at Llanmelin and the little blue trail markers in the bog, whether this province that had bred his mother was going to take him in or spit him out. The bog had offered an unpleasant third possibility, a gruesome combination of both. [loc. 3193]
After my reread of Frontier Wolf, I found myself in the mood for more historical fiction set in Roman Britain. I'd bought this a year or so ago, but not read it: I might have been more inclined to do so if I'd realised that 'Damion Hunter' is a pen-name of Amanda Cockrell. I am, I freely admit, biased against historical novels by male writers: all too often they focus on the military aspects of a story, to the detriment of characterisation and atmosphere. This is not the case with Rosemary Sutcliff (despite the, I think, exclusively male protagonists of her Roman Britain novels) and it's not the case here.
Shadow of the Eagle is set in Britain, around 78-80AD. The central character is Faustus Silvius Valerianus, son of a Roman father and a British mother: after his father's death he sold the family farm and enlisted in the Army, and shortly thereafter he's posted to Britain. There -- besides being haunted by his father's ghost, who's unhappy about the farm being sold -- Faustus encounters several fascinating individuals, including the tomboyish Constantia; the scholarly Demetrius; and Tuathal Techtmar, an Irish prince in exile. They are all, in various ways, caught up in Agricola's campaign to (a) prove that Britain is an island and (b) conquer it.
There are many viewpoint characters (perhaps too many?) including Faustus and Agricola, the Britons Calgacos and his wife Aelwen, and a girl in the Orkneys, Eirian, who listens to the seals. Faustus also becomes involved with the little dark people, familiar from Sutcliff: the aborigines who inhabited Britain before the Picts, Celts et cetera. Perhaps, as one of their elders says, he's related to them via his mother... Though he's a loyal soldier, Faustus also has considerable sympathy for the outsiders, the conquered, the enemy: he's an intriguing and complex character.
Apart from the multiple viewpoints this novel is very much in the Sutcliff style (though sadly the author doesn't have Sutcliff's knack of capturing an ephemeral moment in a single image, such as reflected light on a boathouse roof or a lamp guttering as the rain approaches). I enjoyed it, and will read the rest of the series -- so far there's one further book, Empire's Edge.
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