- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Headline Book Publishing (27 Sep 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747238537
- ISBN-13: 978-0747238539
- Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 14.8 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,148,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
A haunting work of historical fiction set amid the turmoil of the last days of the Roman Empire. From the blood-stained desert sands of Mesopotamia, to the barbaric wilderness and the dreaded painted tribesmen of northern Scotland, to the streets, courtyards and treacherous palaces of a small provincial capital called Londinium, this is the story of Marcus and Julia: two young lovers trying desperately to stay alive and find each other in the twilight days of the greatest Empire the world has ever known.
About the Author
Christopher Hart is a bestselling novelist whose first novel, The Harvest, published in 1999, was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
wonderful read for children,
By
This review is from: Julia (Paperback)
A marvellous and informative book of 4th century Britain. Comparable to The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff and just as highly recommended for children.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Promises much but doesn't deliver,
By A Customer
This review is from: Julia (Paperback)
This is a novel divided into two parts which don't quite amount to a satisfying whole. The first part, recounting Julia's childhood, reads like a rather tedious pastiche of Rosemary Sutcliff, though it's probably intended as a tribute. (In his Notes on the Characters, Napier says he took the name of his male lead from a Sutcliff protagonist as a tribute to her. If so, he might have taken the trouble to spell her surname right.) But the story doesn't take off until part two, when the viewpoint shifts mainly to Julia's friend Marcus, now in the Roman army. We follow his exploits from Britain to the Middle East and then to a thrilling climax among cannibals in the wilds of Caledonia, where Julia, with little outlet for her feistiness, tags along as if the author, having set her up, doesn't know quite what to do with her. William Napier writes in a racy, pacy style. He gives a convincing sense of the uncertainty and foreboding of these end-of-empire times, but disappointingly fails to develop it. It's as if he wanted to use a shoot-'em-up Western-style adventure to carry a deeper premise, but took his eye off the ball. The white hats are too white, the black hats too black and the natives are silly caricatures. The frequent philosophizing, far from giving intellectual depth to the story, seems like tacked-on authorial showing off and the literary joke in the "Vidalius" character is a little too clever (and rendered even more pretentious by a not-quite-explanation in the Notes on Character afterword). But perhaps the biggest missed opportunity is that having established Julia as a pagan in an increasingly Christianized world, he doesn't build on her intriguing (and archaeologically-supported) situation.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Love among the ruins,
By
This review is from: Julia: An Epic Tale of Love and War Set in the Final Days of the Roman Empire (Paperback)
Julia is the story of three love affairs. The first is between Julia, a Spanish orphan sent to live in London during the twilight of the Roman Empire and Marcus her childhood companion. The second is the tale of Marcus's love for the army and the third is their guardian Lucius's love of the empire.Set during the period following Constantine the great's reforms of the empire and the Western Empires final collapse, this is an interesting potrait of a time when the gilt was falling from the Roman facade. Whilst not the equal to the works of Robert Graves, Julia does succeed in bringing to life a neglected segment of Roman history, and in painting a picture of provincial life awy from the glittering capitals of Rome and Constantinople.
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