Collected Miscellany

I just finished the latest book in John Maddox Roberts’ SPQR series that chronicles the adventures of Roman Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus during the last days of the Roman Republic.  Roberts’ latest novel is entitled SPQR XIII: The Year of Confusion: A Mystery (The SPQR Roman Mysteries). 

Here is a brief description of the book’s plot from its publisher:

Caius Julius Caesar, now Dictator of Rome, has decided to revise the Roman calendar, which has become out of sync with the seasons. As if this weren’t already an unpopular move, Caesar has brought in astronomers and astrologers from abroad, including Egyptians, Greeks, Indians and Persians. Decius is appointed to oversee this project, which he knows rankles the Roman public: “To be told by a pack of Chaldeans and Egyptians how to conduct their duties towards the gods was intolerable.” Not long after the new calendar project begins, two of the foreigners are murdered. Decius begins his investigations and, as the body count increases, it seems that an Indian fortuneteller popular with patrician Roman ladies is also involved.

As with the other books in this series, Roberts does a masterful job of developing the plot and characters of this latest mystery.  You find out clues and facts as Decius finds out – I like this style because it keeps you guessing (whereas some books cover events that the main character does not know about until later in the book). 

Roberts continues to flesh out the relationship between Decius and Caesar.  Decius was never really comfortable with Caesar as Caesar rose in power.  In this book, Decius is even more wary of Caesar because Caesar continues to grab more power and make more questionable decisions.  Roberts describes this uneasy relationship wonderfully.

Roberts has the ability to bring the era to life in his books.  For example, he describes the sights and sounds of ancient Rome – what the Roman baths were like and how they were used by the Romans.  His descriptions bring a good visual picture in your mind.  In the scope of Decius’ investigation, Roberts also touches on the mundane things of life like how people travelled from one part of the city to another – the wealthy preferred to be carried in litters while the commoners walked.

As with his other books, this latest book by Roberts will keep you guessing who the culprits are until the very end.

Conspirata: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Robert Harris

Publishers Weekly

In this gripping second installment to his ancient Rome trilogy (after Imperium), bestseller Harris proves once again that politics is an ugly game. Beginning in 63 B.C.E. and told by Cicero’s slave secretary, Tiro, this complex tale continues to chronicle Cicero’s political career as he charms, co-opts, and bribes his way into the exalted position of consul, ruler of Rome. Although Cicero is known as a brilliant politician and philosopher, he was also a slick manipulator and shameless schemer, competing with equally sneaky rivals Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. Cicero realizes that as the empire expands, the greatest threat to Rome comes from within, plotted by well-financed conspirators bent on turning the republic into a dictatorship. With fabulous oratory and trickery, Cicero uncovers and crushes an insurrection, exposing himself to great danger and possible assassination. Riots, murder, civil unrest, corruption, treachery, and betrayal mark Cicero’s political legacy, resulting in a battle between him and Julius Caesar. Throughout, however, Tiro remains loyal and remarkably astute, recognizing that it is an act of madness for a man to pursue power when he could be sitting in the sunshine reading a book

I have followed the writing of Lars Walker for some time (at Brandywine Books, The American Spectator, etc.).  And I was vaguely aware of this fiction writing but his books never bubbled up to the top of the reading pile for some reason.

So when Lars asked if I wanted a review copy of his latest work, West Oversea, it seemed like a good time to rectify this gap in my reading.  I have been in a bit of a funk of late – not quite knowing what I want to read – and this seemed a good time to shake things up with something different.

And Lars’s fiction is different: historical fiction focused on the Norseman or Vikings but with a supernatural or spiritual component.  Here is how his publisher descirbes his most recent book:

Lars Walker’s third novel about the Vikings begins in the year 1001. King Olaf Trygvesson is dead, but his sister’s husband, Erling Skjalgsson, carries on his dream of a Christian Norway that preserves its traditional freedoms. Rather than do a dishonorable deed, Erling relinquishes his power and lands. He and his household board ships and sail west to find a new life with Leif Eriksson in Greenland.

This voyage, though, will be longer and more dangerous than they ever imagined. It will take them to an unexplored country few Europeans had seen. Demonic forces will pursue them, but the greatest danger of all may be in a dark secret carried by Father Aillil, Erling’s Irish priest.

West Oversea turned out to be an entertaining read with action, intrigue, and philosophical, and spiritual, musings.  This is not an easy blend to pull off, but Walker does it by not overdoing the commentary and skillfully mixing it in with the story’s supernatural aspect.

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Life is weird sometimes.  I stumbled upon The Coming of Dragons (The Darkest Age I)  in the grocery store.  As I happened to have dragons on the mind I found out that His Majesty’s Dragon (the first in a series by Naomi Novik) was available for free for Kindleusers.  So grabbed it.  Who cares if you don’t read it right away if it is free. A free book is a free book, etc.

But when I couldn’t get a hold of The Book of the Sword (Darkest Age II) right away I went ahead and kept the dragon theme going by reading HMD.  It turned out to be a very interesting experience.  I am a bit torn about the series but glad I read the book.

Here is what Publishers Weekly had to say:

In this delightful first novel, the opening salvo of a trilogy, Novik seamlessly blends fantasy into the history of the Napoleonic wars. Here be dragons, beasts that can speak and reason, bred for strength and speed and used for aerial support in battle. Each nation has its own breeds, but none are so jealously guarded as the mysterious dragons of China. Veteran Capt. Will Laurence of the British Navy is therefore taken aback after his crew captures an egg from a French ship and it hatches a Chinese dragon, which Laurence names Temeraire. When Temeraire bonds with the captain, the two leave the navy to sign on with His Majesty’s sadly understaffed Aerial Corps, which takes on the French in sprawling, detailed battles that Novik renders with admirable attention to 19th-century military tactics. Though the dragons they encounter are often more fully fleshed-out than the stereotypical human characters, the author’s palpable love for her subject and a story rich with international, interpersonal and internal struggles more than compensate.

As practically every reviewer has noted the genre here is really, as Rachel Hartigan Shea put it in her WaPo review, “the dashing Brits-on-ships genre perfected by Patrick O’Brian.”  The dragons are the only fantasy aspect of the book and it really is historical fiction not fantasy.  But for puting dragons in just such a setting Novik deserves credit because  it is a creative twist and she pulls it off.

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–> The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet by Colleen McCullough

Publishers Weekly

McCullough’s (The Thorn Birds) sequel to Pride and Prejudice vaults the characters of the original into a ridiculously bizarre world, spinning dizzily among plot lines until it finally crashes to a close. The novel begins 20 years after Austens classic ends, with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy trapped in a passionless marriage, Jane a spineless baby machine, Lydia an alcoholic tramp, Kitty a cheerfully vapid widow and Mary a naïve feminist and social crusader. Shrewish Mrs. Bennet’s death frees Mary from her caretaker duties, and, inspired by the writings of a crusading journalist, Mary sets off to document the plight of Englands poor. Along the way, she is abused, robbed and imprisoned by the prophet of a cave-dwelling cult. Darcy is the books villain, and he busies himself with hushing up the Bennet clans improprieties in service of his political career. His dirty work is carried out by Ned Skinner, whose odd devotion to Darcy drives his exploits, the nastiest of which involves murder. McCullough lacks Austen’s gently reproving good humor, making the family’s adventures into a mannered spaghetti western with a tacked-on, albeit Austenesque, happy ending.

–> Germania by Brendan McNally

Publishers Weekly

Former journalist McNally puts a magical spin on the last days of the Third Reich in his debut, a busy, beguiling novel perhaps too overstuffed with a dizzying cast and troves of lesser-known historical footnotes. Embedded in politics and far from the atrocities of the Nazi regime, figures like Albert Speer, Heinrich Himmler and Karl Dönitz become curiously sympathetic as they try to manipulate their ways out of their ineluctable futures. Woven throughout is the story of the Loerber quadruplets (known before the war as the Flying Magical Loerber Brothers-think: the Comedian Harmonists), who have psychic abilities and positions of power inside and in opposition to the Nazi regime: Manni is an assassin who can manipulate people’s wills; Sebastian, long thought dead, works for the Blood of Israel resistance and can mass-broadcast dreams; Ziggy is a U-boat captain who can hear and control others’ thoughts; and Franzi is a triple-agent in the SS’s occult studies division and becomes Himmler’s masseur and psychic adviser. The Loerber brothers, however, turn out to be less interesting on the page than Himmler, Speer and their contemporaries, though McNally’s blending of the fantastical with historical record broadens and enriches an oft-told story.