Book Review: Warrior Scarlet

This is our 20th year of homeschooling!! And we have come "back around" to many of our favorite family books as the "2nd Wave" of our children reach different ages. Many of the works of Rosemary Sutcliff fall into the "favorites" category. Her books are so very well written, filled with intricate plots, well developed characters, historically accurate information, and lots of exciting adventures. 


Warrior Scarlet is, historically speaking, the earliest one we read together. Set in the Bronze Age, it tells the story of Drem and his journey into manhood. The custom of the tribe is for each young man, as he came of age, to enter the Boy's House for three years where he received the training needed to become a warrior. At the end of that time, each boy was required to face the final challenge of his training: the Wolf Slaying. For a boy to cross over to the Man's Side, he had to slay a wolf by himself. As difficult a task as that would be under normal circumstances, imagine if you had been born with only one functional arm? That's what Drem faced.


And so Drem's story builds and builds until that fateful day when his lot is drawn to slay his wolf. He had dreamed of that day for years, but when it finally arrived and he was face to face with a massive male, things did not go quite as he had hoped.


I don't want to give any spoilers here because the suspense in the book is so well crafted, so I will suffice it to say that the plot takes many exciting and unexpected turns. The kids begged me to finish it last night, telling me that there would be no hope of concentrating on the rest of their schoolwork today until they made it to read-aloud-time, and so we sat around the island in the kitchen until about 10 when we finally made it to the end. 


I just love how good historical fiction paints such a great picture of a specific period of time--it's much more effective than some dry old textbook. And with Sutcliff's exceptional skill, the picture painted is quite vivid. Here's a sample: 

"Presently he struck the green Ridgeway that ran from the world's edge to the world's edge along the High Chalk, and followed it for a while, until another track came up from the seaward Marshes and crossed it; and then he turned inland. The sun was westering as he came dipping down into the steep combe that sheltered the home steading; and all the great, rounded, whale-backed masses of the downs were pooled and feathered with coolness, the shadows of a stunted whitethorn tree reaching across half a hillside, every rise and hollow of the land that did not show at all when the sun was high casting its own long, liquid shadow across the gold. The family cattleground in the head of the combe was already in the shade, but farther down, where the combe broadened, the turf roofs of the steading--drying up now in the summer heat--glowed tawny as a hound's coat in the sunlight, and the smoke from the house-place fire was blue as the fluttering haze of flower-heads in the flax plot as he trotted by."

A completely heathen culture, the setting of the story provided much opportunity to discuss the worldview of the tribe and how the choices made in the story reflect that view. 

#42 out of 52 in the challenge:

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