A review by toggle_fow
The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff

5.0

"What it is to be a son, and what it is to have one!"

This is only my second read of this book ever, but I have carried it with me for half my life. The first time I read it - as a teenager bred on stories of good and evil with happy endings and comfortably used to Sutcliff's other heroes - The Lantern Bearers HAUNTED me.

Even now, I don't know if I've ever read such a poignant book. It's just so bleak.

It's the story of Aquila, and the life he lives in a kind of silent howl of agony. As a young legionary, he serves in Britain not too far from the farm on which he was raised, where his father and sister still live. Then Rome withdraws from Britain's shores for the final time, and the Saxons come. Aquila's entire family falls victim to a Saxon raid one way or another, and he is ripped from everything he knows and loves.

That moment changes him forever from the easygoing, friendly young man he had been into the one he becomes: bitter, damaged, and able to see little in life beyond his own hurt. Aquila serves Ambrosius in the eternal wars against the Saxons, and there are themes of civilizational decline and a long, doomed fight against the inexorable march of history - but the book's emotional thrust isn't about that.

The story is sparely written, I would say even more so than Sutcliff's usual understated style. But somehow so much raw pain is constantly conveyed. The heart of the book is in Aquila's relationships. There is a constant tension between the pair of family relationships that anchor him firmly in the past, and the two that pull him forward into the future.

His beloved sister, taken by the Saxons. His father, loved and respected and now dead. After losing them, Aquila very nearly ceases to function. He stumbles on, reflexively refusing to form any more close relationships and refusing to acknowledge his past. He takes a wife, and is a poor husband to her. He has a son, and is an inadequate father. This part hurts so much, because you can see that Aquila cares, but it's so clear that he's failing even when he begins to try.

I'm again not going to be able to review this book in a way that makes sense, or really gives you a good sense of what to expect. But I was a teenager when I first read Aquila's fumbling, blundering efforts to care for Flavian, and I felt the yearning, awkward, wistful mortification and heartbreak to such an extent that it has kept me from rereading this book for more than TEN YEARS. When I tell you that, I hope you understand the death grip this story has on my heart.

Aquila loves his father so much and fails to fill that role for his own son. Aquila adores his sister and does the same exact thing to his own wife that the Saxons did to Flavia. Aquila knows he's crippled in some way, can see that he's "lost something" he had when he was younger - and he blindly flails his way toward living again, loving again. It takes him twenty years. It's so sad and bittersweet and painful even when it's happy. There are large timeskips, but it feels appropriate because Aquila's own life does pass him by while he's focused on nothing but Ambrosius's war.

I rated this book four stars when I first read it. Which really was just my own cowardice at work. Now that I'm older and not unsettled and horrified by a protagonist with deep flaws and a story that isn't happy, I can say that this is without a doubt a five star read. This may even be my favorite Sutcliff. (No shade to my most dearly beloved, The Eagle of the Ninth.)

And something I seem to have utterly missed the first time around - Aquila DOES get a happy ending!

I don't know how I didn't see it, and honestly I don't know how he somehow made it, but the last chapter of this book filled my heart with joy. He gets closure for his losses, a peaceful relationship with a wife he loves, a cause to fight for, and a son who will stand beside him. What more could there be?