Rosemary Sutcliff is never obvious in her interpretation of old causes lost and won…. Blood Feud is in fact what the book is about, the obligation for vengeance not for gain but so that the shades of the dead may rest in peace. (p. 3064)
Relatively short, concentrated, enriched with pictorial detail, the book has an emotional force which relates it, for me, to Rosemary Sutcliff's best work and especially with Eagle of the Ninth. Everything in the book—battle scenes, the discovery of love in various forms, weather and landscape, religious polemic—is reflected through Jestyn, the waif whose life is ruled by accident…. The first-person reminiscence distances old tragedies and conflicts, as Jestyn, now a physician, sends his thoughts back over the years. It is a narrative method well suited to this richly personal chronicle. (p. 3065)
