I don't have a problem with her writing mostly male protagonists--as you say, she's basically doing what slashfic writers do now, and I do get the appeal! I'm more annoyed by the female characters she does write, you know? She could have kept them as supporting characters but made them more three dimensional if she'd liked. I really wish she had!

(I've just looked that up and it blew my mind a little at there wasn't a bigger age gap – I'd mentally positioned them much further apart).

Right?!?

Military families aren't known for their radicalism and free-thinking, and the attachment of Sutcliff to Kipling would certainly have been nourished in that environment; I think it may have strengthened and limited her. In contrast, Le Guin was born into an academic family, so was in a sense primed to ask awkward questions of herself of others.

Oh, absolutely.

No need to apologize! I posted precisely for conversation like this!