Spoilers I say. You can't actually spoil this any more. Very poor stuff indeed. It even has a continuity error between episodes, a sure sign of poor standards and bad editing.

The characters are wooden, the plot doesn't exist, the events that transpire are preposterous. This is woeful writing. I should be ashamed to do it, even as a comedy. Perhaps, like Macro, Mr Scarrow has been threatened with a plummet from the Tarpean rock if he doesn't do as he's told. Realistically Macro would stick a Gladeus into these two Greek courtiers in a dark alley somewhere in the largely lawless place that Rome was and return to his regiment a hero. Mr Scarrow should consider resting on his Roman laurels too, he is destroying what reputation he has with this tosh.

Essentially this is the same story as the first with a few different names and a slightly different order of events. The bad guys deploy all their sinister and unsubtle wiles to get poor Pavo killed in the arena while needing him to win nontheless. He's a hero of the mob so the mob get upset when they stack the odds too far against him by sending the bad guy in in a tank, or something obvious like that. Due to the riot the bad guys decide that now he has to win to save their worthless skins. They deploy their secret weapon, Macro; who had previously been training the other fella under threat of being thrown from a high place to ensure Pavo wins. They motivate Macro by threatening to throw him off a the Tarpean rock. Macro makes a small suggestion to Pavo (who is not yet recovered from the poison he was forced to drink in order to weaken him)in a riot induced interval, and whammo, the nasty dislikeable opponent bites the dust. Closing section, bad guys play yet another rotten trick on Macro. Cue another 5,000 words for a couple of quid, round three - ka-ching!!!! Pavo had to win by the way, I haven't spoiled much in reality. It's advertised as a four book collection and the last one is clearly where he meets Hermes (it's obvious from the title)

I'm not sure what is going on here but there is one 5 star review from someone who says they haven't even read it yet. Give me just a small break. Mr Scarrow is milking his name and the genre way more than should be permitted.

I suspect the well is running dry on this series for Simon Scarrow. It reads like a first draft that has had a cursory edit, a spelling and grammar check and then gotten banged out on the shelves because his loyal fans will buy it anyway. Poor man probably has a contract to produce one a year until his dotage.

The plot is paper thin and the characters are cardboard except for the two leads who are already formed. There are whole scenes that have no point to them whatsoever. I found myself irritated I had to read them in case there was something to it. An example, without spoilers, is a contrived scene where the Gladiators refuse to take part in a mock sea battle, organised to appease the mob and make them forget they are starving to death. The trigger to kick this off is just daft. The emporer is a bit drunk and says something casual. The Gladiators put a preposterous interpretation on it and decide to have a quick rebellion. They have a decent scrap in which Macro gets his sword nicely wet, and then it's back to the sea battle less a few Gladiators. Why??? It's contrived, artificial and adds nothing to the story except a thousand words or so and a fight. Perhaps that is the point. Maybe he has a word and fight budget to meet.

There are these strange laboured conversations, some in the middle of the action, as Scarrow tells us the story. Is it because he can't be bothered to put in the effort to show it? Then at the end, just like Poirot, he lays out the bits we've missed, perhaps in case we didn't get it, or maybe he couldn't be bothered to fix his plot holes having reached the end.

I wonder if Simon Scarrow is just tired of Macro and Cato. I won't be getting the next unless I hear it's really good.

Although this book is called How To Write, I think at base it does a slightly different job. The emphasis is rather more, how to avoid getting it wrong. For me this is no bad thing. A lot of books offering help and guidance in any field tackle their subject by effectively saying the way to do whatever it is is to do it this way; because this is the way I do it. This book approaches the subject by saying, here are the aspects of writing you need to get right. It then presents examples of mistakes to avoid. Combined with selected examples from a wide variety of published works with explanations of why the selected extract does it's job, or doesn't do it, it illustrates what you need to get right and how it can be gotten right, or wrong.

It is no surprise that the book is divided in well delineated sections. The author, Harry Bingham, runs a writers consultancy and the approach feels like well defined lectures, each focussed on their specific subject, plot, character, marketplace, editing, etc etc. The approach in the book almost certainly has it's genesis in the structure of some of the courses that they run.

You don't have to read the whole thing front to back. If you understand marketplace, skip that bit. It's OK to mooch around.

In summary, this isn't going to show you how to write. But if you have it in you to write then it can help you to become a better writer, maybe even a successful one.

The blurb that went with this led me to expect versions of the tracks that have been made famous to be on this CD. Unfortunately they are not those versions and it is quite disappointing. It was also rather expensive. I have played it once and have now put it in the car boot pile.

One has to wonder why "if nobody speaks of remarkable things" is "acclaimed". I suspect the reason is that it is fundamentally different to the accepted norm. It is however different in that it lacks almost everything a novel is supposed to do.

All novels have flaws, but I think this is fundamentally fractured.

It has no story line as such.

It is full of characters who are described, but not developed beyond the superficial level of that description. You can't engage with the characters because nothing happens to them, in fact they don't even have names.

The whole thing is a vehicle to tease you along to a mysterious tragic event that is consistently about to happen, or happened three years ago, depending on which of the two timelines you are in. The plan, I think, is that you will desperately want to know and so will keep wading through the endless irrelevance to find it out. Well I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I will tell you that when you get there it won't be worth the effort. It is not spellbinding, as suggested on the cover, it is a tease to a tragic, but otherwise ordinary occurence to which for example, the presence of an old man with a grey beard painting his window frames blue is entirely unconnected, except that he happens to be nearby.

To my way of thinking reading a book can have one of three purposes:

1. To engage one's mind and entice one to become part of it, to live it in effect. There is no storyline, nothing happens to the majority of the characters and you can't identify with them.

2. To educate you and improve your mind. It certainly contains no new facts. If you want to learn how to write 90,000 words about nothing in particular, followed by 500 about the focus, then here it is.

3. To simply entertain. This is a hard work read, there is no story and it is not entertaining.

Finally, the prose is supposed to be poetic. Well, it is. But for the length of novel? That's just irritating. It leads to strange structures in paragraphs where the narrative is being dictated by the need to be poetic. Why on earth is it necessary to have a postscript about the typeface? Is it because that's as interesting as the book?

There is barely enough in this for a short story. It isn't a novel, it's an exercise in standing out from the crowd by being different. But that's all it is. Different; not good.

There are spoilers here so if you want to give this rubbish a chance do not read on.

As with the other reviewers I think this was let down by the plot. There wasn't one and it had so many preposterous moments that I wonder about the editors and writers professionalism.

Idiot plumber and daughter are stuck in a tunnel in traffic gridlock knowing that they have to get to high ground, but decide they will not walk as they won't get anywhere fast. Hours later surrounded by panicking runners the flood waters arrive and they have to smash their way out of the vehicle. Proving Darwin wrong their stupidity does not self select them out of the gene pool, they survive.

Hero and wife have jumped from the barrier. Against all odds they swim to the relative safety of a wrecked ship. Wife decides she wants to go back!!! Some chance. Then, without explaining why hero jumps off the ship. Turns out he is after a raft. They get in the raft, leaving the safety of the ship and in about 30 seconds are swept into the underground system.

Brilliant professor didn't jump from the barrier. He is spotted by CCTV on the barrier and rescued. It's marvellous how the electronics in this disaster are unaffected by water. All sorts of visual marvels that make you wonder how closely we may be observed when everything is working. Despite this wonderful surveillance the plucky "let's save ourselves" Cobra team think everyone is dead until a news helicopter happens to spot a distress signal.

The police Commissioner manages to contact her daughters in a cab surrounded by rising water (incidentally they and the cabby are unaware of the rising water) just as the mobile network is going to be turned off (and she knows this). Does she urgently warn them and beg them to get to high ground. She does not.

Underground adventure. Experienced old hand and young apprentice meet up with hero and wife, who lost their raft, fortunately as it would have got in the way a bit. In terrible peril old hand saves them with a wartime tunnel escape route, but dies himself in the rushing water. With seconds to spare before being engulfed hero and kid commisserate for what seems like an eternity. There's a lot of this sort of introspection instead of fleeing for your life.

It goes on, but the end is just amazingly barmy. Having decided that they have to lower the barrier to let the water out prof, hero-son and wife return to the barrier with a bit of army help. Only then is it revealed that someone has to undertake a suicide mission to release an interlock which is underwater and there is not enough air in the bottle to get them out again in time. The brilliant professor decides to sacrifice himself and sets off with one tiny air bottle. Unbelievable; they have helicopters all over the place. Get more scuba gear! Alternative, get out and have the air force blow a hole in it. Oh, good idea; after the prof has sacrificed himself, and because it might take 2 minutes longer than predicted the air force are scrambled to, yes, blow a hole in it, killing the principal characters still extant. Like two minutes matters when millions of gallons of water are on the move. Aborted with half a second to spare. Hero, wife and the city are saved

Idiot and daughter have survived too. They make it to Greenwich where they are miraculously re-united with Mother in a crowd of thousands. Mother was last seen in Fife (north Scotland) in the first disasterous flood, 24 hours earlier.

This is utter tosh. There is so much more to say but I want to do something else. The only believable part is that the Met Office got it completely wrong.

These days movies seem to rely on special effects and action. Good though they can be, this movie is good in the old fashioned sense. It tells a good well plotted story with a beginning, a middle and an end. The acting is very good and the action sequences are only where essential to the plot (Bruce Willis has a stunt double and I can't figure out why?). The two male leads are exceptional, even Bruce Willis has matured. The bonus material on the DVD is very good. Explanatory, detailed and fascinating.

One word of caution. Even if you can work out the ending it is best to see the movie, then review the bonus material, then watch it again. It should carry a warning. As twist endings go it's good. I was fooled by The Sting and this one just worked for me too. A Class Movie, worth having in your collection.