Sword at Sunset is a 1963 book by Rosemary Sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff CBE was a British novelist, and writer for children, best known as a writer of historical fiction and children's literature. Although she was primarily a children's author, the quality and depth of her writing also appeals to adults; Sutcliff herself once commented that she wrote...

, part of her The Eagle of the Ninth

The Eagle of the Ninth

The Eagle of the Ninth is a historical adventure novel for children written by Rosemary Sutcliff and published in 1954. The story is set in Roman Britain in the 2nd century AD, after the building of Hadrian's Wall....

series. It is a modern interpretation of the legends of King Arthur

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

.

This is the first novel that Sutcliff wrote using a first-person singular point of view for her story. In an interview with Raymond H. Thompson (in 1986), she explained that she actually spent the eighteen months while writing this story thinking like a man, and felt that the story was being fed to her.

Unlike most of the series, it does not follow either the inheritor of the dolphin

Dolphin

Dolphins are marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in 17 genera. They vary in size from and , up to and . They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating...

 seal

Seal (device)

A seal can be a figure impressed in wax, clay, or some other medium, or embossed on paper, with the purpose of authenticating a document ; but the term can also mean the device for making such impressions, being essentially a mould with the mirror image of the design carved in sunken- relief or...

 ring or the person who will eventually marry said inheritor; although the current inheritor, the son of the protagonist of The Lantern Bearers

The Lantern Bearers (Sutcliff novel)

The Lantern Bearers is a historical adventure novel for children written by Rosemary Sutcliff and published in 1959, with illustrations by Charles Keeping...

, is a minor character in the book, the action follows the character of Artos (Arthur) as established in The Lantern Bearers.

Plot

The action of the novel continues that of The Lantern Bearers. Artos recalls his life as he lies near death, from when he served under his uncle, the British high king Ambrosius. He has gathered a core cavalry group that will become Artos' Companions, and win a major victory. During this activity, he meets a girl who drugs and seduces him. He is unaware that the girl is his sister, and that her seduction was a deliberate plan from her mother to gain revenge against their father: Ygerna, the girl, like Artos, is Uther's child. Artos' seduction and the conception of Medraut is Ygerna's means of bringing ruin to Artos.

Artos marries Guenhumara in order to bolster his forces with much needed troops, and his best friend Bedwyr (combining both the roles of Bedivere and Lancelot) eventually betrays Artos by his involvement with Artos' wife.

Sutcliff presents a more realistic story than some Arthur legends, removing Merlin and many of the fantastic elements, and grounding Artos and his followers as clinging to Roman ways after Rome has left Britain to fend for itself. The battles in particular are described quite realistically, and show her knowledge of Roman fighting techniques.