I'm part of a small writers' group where we critique each other's work, and a while back one of the other members of the group was telling the rest of us about the Ninth Roman Legion, which apparently wandered off into the wilds of Scotland, some thousands strong, and entirely disappeared. No-one ever found out what happened to them, and I was quite interested. I mean, what a great story! So when I came across this in the library it pricked my memory and I thought, well, why not.

I liked it. Very well written, and I think Sutcliff came to a sensible conclusion about what might have happened - basically, that there was a breakdown in discipline, infighting, and mass desertion plus, you know, battle with the local Scots, who were none too thrilled with yet another wave of invaders. Can't honestly say that I blame them. Which makes it difficult for me to feel really in sympathy with the protagonist, Marcus. His dad was one of the officers who disappeared with the Ninth, so when Marcus, also a soldier, is posted to Britain he can't resist following up. He desperately wants to retrieve the eagle that was symbolic of the Ninth, and thus reform the legion, presumably to keep the rest of the countryside down again, and I don't have a lot of time for his goals, I have to say. He is genuinely quite sympathetic to the Britons that he meets, but there's not a lot of sense in freeing the slave who becomes his best friend, while still being happy to keep supporting the invasion that, you know, captured and enslaved the poor bastard in the first place.