Eagle of the Ninth is a book about a near-twenty year old man, Marcus, and is set in the early A.D's at the time of the great Roman rule. Marcus, a commander in the Roman legion, wounds his leg in a battle, and the effect is he gets booted out of the legion. No longer knowing what to do he runs off to his uncle's house to stay there until he can walk. He meets some pretty interesting people there, like a gladiator named Esca. Marcus bought Esca to free him from the cruel world of fighting in the arena, and for a while Esca remains Marcus' slave until he frees Esca from slavery altogether. He also meets a girl named Cottia, who is originally Britain but lives with her Roman family members, and is forced to abide by their customs. It is hinted that Marcus has some sick relationship with this girl-who by the way, is thirteen (gag). After about 2 years of living with his uncle, Marcus' meets and ex-general and has the idea to go out and find his fathers lost legion and the symbol for it, so the legion may once again be started. After many travels in the great Britain they come to find the eagle by some strange events, and the last 100 pages are told about how they get home. FINALLY, when they reach the original setting, they are tired, worn out and beaten down, and they don't even do what they had originally planned- they don't make the eagle into a new legion and the legion is pretty much forgotten. And it is finally thought that Marcus will return to his home land of Rome, to live with his young wife and his sort-of-a-still-slave.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Personally, I think this book brings a large significance to the world, I mean think about it. If we brought this book to war, we could threaten to make our entire prisoner's read it till they die of torture, and by the time we got to the end of the first paragraph we would know where all the nuclear bombs and missals were hidden! Just think of the wonders! Thank you SO much Sutcliff! Ok, seriously, the book was boring, snooze-fest, that moved about as fast as a snail, no, a dead snail, no, a dead 100 year old snail that got ran over with horses at the turn of the century. It was confusing, and WAY to many unnecessary commas. If you read this book you honestly wouldn't be able to figure out what was going on until chapter two (if you hadn't already fallen asleep). For boys and girls it wasn't very good, no matter what they say, there's not a lot of action and definitely not a lot of Romance. But for all those people that have problems getting to sleep at night, this is the book for you!
|
The Eagle of the Ninth Books In Print, Audio Books.