The Eagle Has Fallen

[Robert Vermaat]

Actually I think Sutcliff's characterisation was the weakest aspect of the 'eagle' novels - her repeated Marcus Aquilas always seemed a bit bland to me and lacked depth. Alcibiades in her 'grown up' novel The Flowers of Adonis was much darker and more complex, so it was probably just a product of the intended readership.

Exactly. Alcibiades is for different readers, you can't confront 11-14 year old readers with that guy yet. :evil:

Sutcliff was great at plot, pace and description - 'eagle of the ninth' etc have a really vivid sense of place and atmosphere. Some of the landscapes in Frontier Wolf (another 'Aquila' book) are really quite lyrical.

Which is especially daunting hen you realise that she, because of her physical limitations, was never able to visit the places she wrote about.
Maybe her characters are eveolved less than they could, but in historical fiction I don't think that's needed. To the contrary, some authors want to put their stamp on a historical personage, thereby altering the entire character.

A lot of what Sutcliff wrote has been corrected by archaeology. Already when she was writing, she had to change to findspot: originally the villa she had in mind turned out to be th basilica and in a later novel she 'reburied' the eagle accordingly.