#frontier wolf

[spiritarcher]

Going gallivanting to see if it’s any Postes about my beloved Frontier Wolf, and seeing @verecunda ‘s posts on the horizon to greet me.

[healerqueen]

🐬 Sutcliff Ask Meme 🐬

Happy 105th birthday to beloved author Rosemary Sutcliff (born December 14, 1920). @verecunda put together a Q&A for Rosemary Sutcliff fans. Thanks for these great questions!

Rules: answer the questions, tag anyone who you think might want to play along, and - if you like - add a question of your own.

1. Your favourite work by Sutcliff. The Eagle of the Ninth, followed by The Silver Branch. Runners up are The Lantern Bearers, The Shield Ring, Frontier Wolf, Knight's Fee, and The Armourer's House. I love them all so much.

2. Your favourite bearer of the dolphin ring. Marcus Aquila. I admire him and identify with him (for his disability, not his personality).

3. A supporting or background character you love. Rosemary Sutcliff writes the best supporting characters. I'm going to go with Aunt Honoria. She is everything, with her strong, quirky, plucky personality, unfazed by any crisis. Not to mention her flamboyant makeup.

4. Your favourite animal companion. Cub from Eagle of the Ninth. Adorable wolf puppy turned loyal friend.

5. Is there any setting you find especially memorable? Maybe the abandoned signal tower where Marcus and Esca have their final showdown in Eagle of the Ninth.

6. Wild geese flighting and striped native rugs: is there a classic Sutcliff motif that never fails to warm your heart when it appears? I love Sutcliff's mentions of the curlew and plover.

7. The natural world is a vivid presence in all her work. Is there any particular nature description that sticks in your mind? The sunset just before the world falls apart in Eagle of the Ninth. "Before their feet the land swept away southward over ridge after ridge into the blue distance.... Far below them, among dark ranks of pine trees, the northern arm of a great loch reflected back the flame of the sunset; and Marcus greeted it as a familiar friend...and yet there was a queer superstitious feeling in him that it had all been too easy—a queer foreboding of trouble to come. And the sunset seemed to echo his mood. A most wonderful sunset; the whole western sky on fire, and high overhead, torn off, hurrying wind clouds caught the light and became great wings of gold that changed, even while Marcus watched them, to fiery scarlet. Stronger and stronger grew the light, until the west was a furnace banked with purple cloud, and the whole world seemed to glow, and the upreared shoulder of the mountain far across the loch burned crimson as spilled wine. The whole sunset was one great threat of coming tempest; wind and rain, and maybe something more. Suddenly it seemed to Marcus that the crimson of that distant mountain shoulder was not wine, but blood." —The Eagle of the Ninth, Rosemary Sutcliff

8. Biggest tearjerker. (Happy or sad tears!) I have cried rereading the bit when Marcus's friends come to support him before his big surgery.

9. How did you first discover Sutcliff? It must have come home from the library in the family's stack of books, but I wasn't the one who chose it. Once I read it, at age 15, I was hooked for life.

10. What is it about her work that appeals to you the most? The characters, I think. She's a master of characterization, and I care about them so much. But the writing style itself is masterful, and she also excels at writing plot, setting, themes, character relationships, tension, and so much more.

11. A book that deserves more love. Knight's Fee and The Shield Ring. I also love the last third of Blood Feud.

12. A book you haven’t read yet, but want to. I think I've read most of the ones I want to read, but there are a few I should read. I finally read Black Ships Before Troy in 2025, and I'd like to read The Wanderings of Odysseus.

13. Which book(s) would you love to get a film or TV adaptation? I don't usually like adaptations, so I usually hope my favorites will not be adapted. But I'd love a perfect book-accurate adaptation of Eagle of the Ninth that captured everything I love about the book. I know it has a movie, and that's great, but it's not accurate to the book, even if they did some things well.

14. Is there any historical period, incident, or figure you wish she’d written about? Ooh. I think she wrote most of the ones I love! I am obsessed with Roman Britain because of her. She has a couple of medieval books. She wrote about Vikings. I think I'd have liked to see more Viking novels from her, cause I love Vikings so much—but the ones she did write are excellent (I can think of at least three).

15. Rec a Sutcliff-themed fanwork (fic, art, vid, etc.) to share with fellow fans. This is my favorite piece of fan art. I have not seen enough fan art for these wonderful books.

I had fun answering these questions.

I tag: @thejoyousjester @freenarnian @idratherdreamofjune @dimsilver @septembersung and anyone else who wants to do this.

[verecunda]

Look, you all know how I feel about modern AUs, but I'm going to break habit and say a Frontier Wolf Slow Horses!AU could be a grand thing.

(Yes, I've started watching it at last. Be proud of me. 😁)

[chiropteracupola]

not sure how specific a prompt you want but!! i would love to see another hilarion drawing 👀 if you want something more specific, maybe something to do with those closing scenes from frontier wolf where alexios is recuperating, but i am very much not fussy :)

time to take a break!

[idratherdreamofjune]

Fortnight of Books 2020

Day 13:

Favorite passage/quote of 2020: Three stood out this year: Ngaio Marsh captured elusive feelings in a way that astonished me - the painful glory of light on the mountains, and the sudden hurt of missing again someone whose been absent a while. Daphne Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn had a bit at the ending about faith and courage vs. evil and apostasy that stood out stark from the overall unimpressiveness of the rest of the book.

Book which had the overall greatest impact on you this year: The Shining Company was the most pronounced of the unexpectedly strengthening fiction I encountered in 2020. Frontier Wolf was another - both were read in the midst of fighting COVID at work, and I remember reading in October the scene in FW where Alexios is trying to fall asleep in a trench in an abandoned fort as he’s on the run with his men, and he sees the stars and thinks “I have served with men, and I have seen Orion’s sword in the sky,” and then rolls over and falls deeply asleep. That feeling that the struggle has been worth it, and that life is still beautiful struck me strongly. Then in November, the sacrifices in The Shining Company, the idea of gradually coming to the point of being willing to give up your life to buy life for others, and that hint of survivor’s guilt... Nothing ever got that bad of course, but compared to life (and nursing) in 2019 it sure felt apocalyptic, so it was comforting to read about others in dire situations choosing to keep the faith and still having hope and friendship, and then seeing life continue afterwords.

Day 14:

A book you didn’t read this year that will be your #1 priority in 2021? That would be my long awaited/long procrastinated reread of A Kingdom Far and Clear. :P I think I’m trying to put it off because I don’t want it to be over??

New book you are most anticipating for 2021? Intisar Khanani’s The Theft of Sunlight - we got to meet some of the characters already in the short story The Bone Knife and I’m excited to see more of Rae.

[proto-language]

i am once again upset that there is no film adaptation of Frontier Wolf

[spiritarcher]

“Let us see you, old wolf”

(I’ll explain later 😈)

[verecunda]

The Dunadd pin is a cast bronze example comparable to those thought to have been made at Traprain Law in the 2nd to 4th centuries...

Archaeology nerd brain: Oh, well, that's quite interesting. Potential sign of contact between the east and west coast? Though of course there are so many variables, the pin might not be from Traprain itself, and even if it was, it could have reached Argyll via so many channels, it may even have been old by the time it got to Dunadd...

Writer brain: 👀 👀 Oh??? 👀 👀 Contact between the Votadini and the Epidii??? (Or maybe later - Gododdin and Dál Riata?) 👀 👀 👀 But what kind? Trade? Diplomatic relations? A marriage alliance? Spies and skulduggery? Who was wearing a Votadinian pin on Dunadd?? 👀 👀 (Watch me spin an entire novel plan out of this!)

Fandom brain: Well, there are Dalriads in the Frontier Wolves at Castellum, so one of them could easily have come by a pin from Traprain. Maybe one of the Arcani who defected, then made his way back to his own homeland?