Sword at Sunset

"Sword at Sunset" is a 1963 book by Rosemary Sutcliff, part of her "The Eagle of the Ninth" series. It is a modern interpretation of the legends of King Arthur.

This is the first novel that Ms Sutcliff wrote using a first-person singular point of view for her story. In an interview with Raymond H. Thompson (in 1986), she explained that she actually spent the eighteen months while writing this story thinking like a man, and felt that the story was being fed to her.

Plot

The action of the novel follows closely after "The Lantern Bearers". Artos (Arthur) recalls his life as he lies near death, from when he served under his uncle, the British high king Ambrosius. He has gathered a core cavalry group that will become Artos' Companions, and win a major victory. During this activity, he meets a girl who drugs and seduces him. He is unaware that the girl is his sister, and that her seduction was a deliberate plan from her mother to gain revenge against their father. That is, Ygerna, the girl, like Artos, is Uther's child. Artos' seduction and the conception of Medraut is Ygerna's means of bringing ruin to Artos.

Artos marries Guenhumara in order to bolster his forces with much needed troops, and his best friend Bedwyr (combining both the roles of Bedivere and Lancelot) eventually betrays Artos by his involvement with Artos' wife.

Sutcliff presents a more realistic story than some Arthur legends, removing Merlin and many of the fantastic elements and grounding Artos and his followers as clinging to Roman ways after Rome has left Britain to fend for itself. The battles in particular are realistic, and show a grasp of Roman fighting techniques. Sutcliff grounds her hero in the Dark Ages, and makes her story seem entirely truthful. Sutcliff's research and narrative skill create a marvellous story, and by focusing on Arthur, she has shown the hero who has brought so many writers and storytellers back to these tales with their own viewpoints.