This was, in many ways, a great historical adventure novel. I confess that I have not read of the other novels in this series so I came to this book about halfway the overall story arc. Fortunately the main character is Vespasian - well-known Roman Emperor so it was fairly easy to place the book in the story line of his life.
What the author seems to have done is to take what is known about Vespasian's life in this period before he became emperor, and then weave in fictional characters and events to make for an exciting action book. He has done this well.
I found the book to be well written with believable characters and a great story line(s). The action scenes were well done, and trotted along at a good pace. Certainly a cracking holiday read.
On the other hand, there were a few oddities. The book is written in four parts, with each part being a self-contained story. A couple of characters carry over from one part to another, but not the story lines. The third part seems to be the conclusion to something that happened in an earlier novel in this series. I found that unsatisfying as I could not really follow what was supposed to have happened in the earlier section.
My only real historical criticism here is that the author has included just about everything bad that was ever written about Nero. This makes him an entirely negative character. Fair enough, I suppose, but I have always wondered how Nero got to be so popular for so long if he was that bad. And the sources were all written by his enemies after his death.
But I quibble. This is a jolly good read. Enjoy it.
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