David Urbach has pointed me to a blogger’s 10/10 review of Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth.

Rosemary Sutcliff’s most famous book ought to be looked at in two different ways, and judged on two levels. Firstly, any reader venturing into historical fiction will be instantly drawn to it as a deserving classic. Every word of praise afforded The Eagle of the Ninth is surely deserved, and every criticism should be scrutinised heavily. This book is not only a simple story; it is a revelation. It is a sudden meeting between the children’s and young adults’ fiction of the ’80s and ’90s, when children’s literature began to be taken seriously; and literature from the early twentieth century and the nineteenth century, when writers felt able to wax philosophic and lyrical, and were not so concerned with spending a hundred pages on diligently establishing a scene and building meticulously to a grand climax or a cheap twist.
Source: The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff  | Library of Libation

• More on Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novel The Eagle of the Ninth
• More reviews of children’s literature by Rosemary Sutcliff