Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Is this a novel?, 29 May 2007
The front of the cover reads "An Epic Novel" - but is it really a novel?
Personaly I would call it a collection of short stories - allthough the stories are linked together, primarily by an amulet which is passed down from generation to generation.
Also, many of the stories span several years - divided into small chapters, or sections, each titled by a year in which the action takes plcase.
All in all, this could be quite a fragmentary read - but it is not!!
Steven Saylor is a fantastic story steller - also in short stories. The stories are told in his ususal style: good settings, lots of intresting details - but always with a clear focus on the cahracters and the story.
Granted, the setting of the first stories is so far from our usual image of ancient Rome (and the time of the Roma Sub Rosa series) that some may be dissapointed, while others (like me) will find it facinating to get a glimpse of the early years Rome.
And connectiing these 500 years of history gives the book a true epic feeling - novel or not!
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Roma, 13 Aug 2007
Steven Saylor has used the genre of historical fiction to produce a fascinating and informative account of the first thousand years of the history of Rome. It begins with the salt traders who first camped by the Tiber and concludes with Octavian taking power and ending the Republic.
It is in effect a series of short stories linked buy lineage and a religious amulet and this structure works remarkably well. I've noticed one or two fans of the sub Roma series criticising the quality of plotting and characterization; I couldn't disagree more and, considering that the genre is the short story format, I found the characters well drawn and easy to identify with. This is a different type of historical novel from the Gordianus mysteries but equally rewarding.
Saylor is a wonderfully fluent narrative writer who deserves greater recognition. There is no one that I know of who can recreate the past with such intense, gritty clarity and he has succeeded here again.
I do have a couple of minor reservations:
1. I am interested by the brutalisation of the people of the Roman State. There are references to public games and chariot racing but I would have appreciated a section on how the State and its people moved from that situation to one where it was sport to watch men kill each other. And how did this progression relate to the politics and social situation of the day?
2. Rome created a military machine (the legionary army) which in the end defeated all other opposition but how did this machine come about? Who moved the Roman military system away from the Greek/Etruscan hoplite model to the legionary one? What was the process of evolution? I would have appreciated some references along the way because Rome was after all a military state first and foremost.
But these are minor gripes in the overall scheme of this book. This is an excellent read.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Saylor breaks the bonds., 31 Aug 2007
I picked this up in my local library, surprised to see a book like this by Steven Saylor. I'd read some of his "ancient detective" books and enjoyed them well enough - though not enough to write a review for any of them. I hoped this would be good and was not disappointed. It is somewhat derivative, obviously influenced by Edward Rutherfurd's books such as "Salem," "London" and so on - but what the heck, I enjoyed Rutherfurd's books so was willing to give Saylor a go. Taking the same approach as Rutherfurd, telling a series of short stories linked over time through one or two families, it tells the story of early Rome from its humble beginnings as a trade route through to the time of Octavius. It handles such themes as Romulus and Remus, Corialanus, the invasion of the Gauls during the 4th century BC, the Punic Wars, the Gracchi and the end of the Republic and tells the stories in an interesting and lively way. Along the way he explains the growth of Rome's peculiar customs and religious rites and the development of its political institutions in a very accessible way.
Well done, Mr Saylor - a thoroughly good read, well researched (thank God) and very well written.
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