For those who submit willingly to magic, Rosemary Sutcliff's new novel, The Mark of the Horse Lord, will cast its spell no less powerfully than any of her books since The Eagle of the Ninth. This is her fifteenth book for children, the flowering since 1950 of a remarkable talent which enchants readers old and young, exercises critics, and makes irrelevant the notion that the historical novel is barely concealed didacticism or an escape from the difficulty of writing for adolescents about contemporary problems. Miss Sutcliff's books have an organic unity which sets them apart from the extrovert 'good yarn' or historical fiction, and they make no concessions to ideas of what is a suitable book for children. (p. 249)

Timid as they now seem, her early books are not without significance, especially as historical stories for the under-tens are thin on the ground. The Chronicles of Robin Hood, The Queen Elizabeth Story, The Armourer's House, and Brother Dusty-Feet enjoy a continuing popularity with the young who identify history with legend. The heroes and heroines are the idealized playmates of the only child. Simon is the first novel to show the power that the later books developed. Miss Sutcliff sketches a vigorous hero and shows unexpected skill in describing battles.

In discussing the novels after Simon one moves back and forth between the relevance of the thematic material to the growing points of adolescence and the varied response of the readers…. [The] Roman books, notably the trilogy of The Eagle of the Ninth, The Silver Branch, and The Lantern Bearers, are the most generally appreciated. The grave virtues of the maimed heroes chime in with the serious idealism of adolescence. Miss Sutcliff's theme is the struggle of the Roman ideal, the light, against the dark ignorance of the barbarians. Aquila in The Lantern Bearers learns that an ideal persists even when empires totter, and the reader knows that history is the continuity of the past and present; the soil and the people remain. Owain in Dawn Wind discovers that a nation grows when warring tribes join in a common cause. These books provide the definition of authentic Sutcliff material: symbolic action, the heroic figure who surmounts his disability, the father figure, the links with the past in the timeless characters of seers and 'little dark people'. There are hosts of other good books for children on the Roman period; these are among the best because the universality of Miss Sutcliff's themes is balanced by detailed description.

The secret of their success is the close identification of the author, reader, and hero. The books seem to be written from the inside so that the author's imagination is fused with the reader's response…. Adolescents recognize the adult complexity of Miss Sutcliff's themes and respond to it while continuing to read the stories with the total involvement which is the best feature of the reading done by children.

This becomes even clearer in Warrior Scarlet, which is central in Miss Sutcliff's development. In this book many strands come together—awareness of historical continuity, the significance of the countryside, tribal rituals—to explore the theme of initiation into manhood…. Warrior Scarlet, with its flashing bronze and gold colouring, its archetypal issues and conflicts, is the strongest emotional experience Miss Sutcliff provides and is outstanding among children's books of any kind.

Where the historical record is scant the author's penetrative imagination has the greater scope. Miss Sutcliff illuminates the blank pages with an intensity which comes from her reading of heroic legends which are the history of these times in that they portray what greatness, fealty, and sacrifice meant to the followers and descendants of the warrior kings. She is fortunate in that she has no self-consciousness when writing about sublimity. Her style rises to a bardic strain and, while some passages are over-written, there is, on the whole, more restraint than excess. (pp. 250-52)

In her modern versions of Beowulf and the stories of Cuchulain in The Hound of Ulster, Miss Sutcliff returns to the sources of her inspiration. Her Arthurian novel, Sword at Sunset, which was written for adults, is a working-out at length of her preoccupation with the 'leader whose divine right is to die for his people'. The Mark of the Horse Lord has traces of all three. In action and tone it is the most truly epic of the novels and, so far as readers are concerned, the most adult. It shows how far Miss Sutcliff has come from the wounded Marcus in The Eagle of the Ninth. (p. 252)

[An] awareness that public excellence is the extension of private integrity links [The Mark of the Horse Lord] with The Lantern Bearers, Warrior Scarlet, and Knight's Fee. The familiar elements recur: the dark patch of history, the tribal feud, the hunts, the battles. The plot is slight, apart from the central action, so that each scene is described in detail to carry the intensity of the feud. The reader needs more experience than can generally be assumed of eleven-year-olds. For the first time in her novels for the young Miss Sutcliff may have outstripped her readers. (p. 253)

The Horse Lord becomes larger than life until he becomes Arthur, Cuchulain, and Beowulf in one. There is enough artistry and complexity to extend an adolescent's experience. Undoubtedly the book is another success for Miss Sutcliff. The battle scenes are as grand as ever, but even in the descriptive passages there is a sharper edge on the prose which makes the style more taut….

The Mark of the Horse Lord shows the coming-of-age of Miss Sutcliff's hero and the total assurance of the writing indicates an author fully in command of her power. (p. 254)