In 600 A.D., many years after King Arthur defeated the Saxons, the tribes of Britain are again threatened by invaders who are gaining strength in the East. Prosper and his loyal bondsman, Conn, answer the call of King Mynydogg to join the fighting forces of Prince Gorthyna and  the highly skilled Shining Company.

I saw riders with black eyesockets in glimmering mail where their faces should have been, grey wolfskins catching a bloom of light from the mist and the moon; a shining company indeed, not quite mortal-seeming.

Led by the gallant Prince Gorthyrn, the company of Companions – an army made up of three hundred younger sons of minor kings and trained to act as one fighting brotherhood – embark on a perilous but glorious campaign. According to the UK publisher  Red Fox (Macmillan) “this is an epic story of battles and bravery from the acclaimed historical storyteller, Rosemary Sutcliff”.

A reader of Rosemary with many of her books on Library Thing, and a writer too,  G R Grove wrote of the book:

This is the story of Y Gododdin – of the three hundred British warriors who rode from Dun Eidyn (modern Edinburgh) to Catraeth (possibly Catterick in Yorkshire) in order to fight the Saxon incomers there, perhaps a hundred years after King Arthur. Their tale survives only in the long poem, or rather collection of poems, written by Aneirin their bard. The story is told here by one of the shield-bearers – secondary fighters who supported the warriors, rather like squires to a knight. Long may they all be remembered!

Featuring here because of the 2010 Phoenix Award, other awards or recommendations in the US for The Shining Compnay have included: An American Library Association ‘Notable Children’s Book’; an IRA-CBC Children’s Choice;  a Booklist Editors’ Choice; and one of the  School Library Journal Best Books of the Year.

• For more on all Rosemary’s books, see  the Sutcliff Stories page of this blog
• More books at the virtual library I am building at LibraryThing