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A review by nicktomjoe
Dawn Wind by Rosemary Sutcliff
5.0
Fourteen year old Owain has survived the last great battle between the British and the Saxons. Three generations after The Lantern Bearers and Sword at Sunset, the heroic hopes of the British are extinguished, and with Dog, the young war-hound that joins him, Owain makes his way across a southern Britain occupied by the invaders. But this is not a great escape story: it is hard to recount the story without spoilers, but he meets Regina, a young girl, and they travel together with a growing friendship until their paths separate tragically. I really hadn’t expected the events at this juncture, or that Owain would not be able to rescue his friend, but the pace slows here, and Owain, sold as a slave, must make a life in a little Saxon farmstead where he grows into adulthood. “Only, while one is young,” a old fellow-thrall advises him, “there is always the hope that one day something will happen; that one day a little wind will rise...” The hopelessness of this central section is breathtaking: it almost seems possible Owain will grow old in his thraldom.
Sutcliff is at her stunning best setting this. Owain makes the most of his life, gaining his master’s trust and the affection of the household, but the reader cannot escape his sense of loss, which increases with each turn. It is late in the narrative - half way through - that Owain’s chances begin open up, but even here change is slow at first; after all, he is at the forefront of the changes that will, over the coming centuries, bring the two warring factions together.
All the gold-star effects of Rosemary Sutcliff’s writing are here: superb landscape writing, heart-wrenching moral dilemmas, and brilliant use of the archaeology. She uses acute insights to explore complex themes of loyalty, loneliness and what it means to belong, as Owain is caught by longing to leave and his understanding of how the Saxon family have come to need him.
This is a vivid story, full of fascinating detail and emotional twists right up to the last pages.
Sutcliff is at her stunning best setting this. Owain makes the most of his life, gaining his master’s trust and the affection of the household, but the reader cannot escape his sense of loss, which increases with each turn. It is late in the narrative - half way through - that Owain’s chances begin open up, but even here change is slow at first; after all, he is at the forefront of the changes that will, over the coming centuries, bring the two warring factions together.
All the gold-star effects of Rosemary Sutcliff’s writing are here: superb landscape writing, heart-wrenching moral dilemmas, and brilliant use of the archaeology. She uses acute insights to explore complex themes of loyalty, loneliness and what it means to belong, as Owain is caught by longing to leave and his understanding of how the Saxon family have come to need him.
This is a vivid story, full of fascinating detail and emotional twists right up to the last pages.