Warrior of Rome II: King of Kings

sweet

Rushed through this unlike the Author who seems to have worked hard to make these historical novels enjoyable & informative.I had picked up the first novel on the off-chance, enjoyed it & I ordered the next 4 half way through the first novel. Not normal for me I'm a Grisham & Pratchett fan so Gladius & Ballista are new.I was worried the series would tail off, I'm on my third and pretty happy he will maintain the excitement.I hope someone notices it and turns it into a movie so I can complain how much better the books are!

Good follow up book.

Perhaps the greatest strength and weakness of both this book and others of this series is Dr. Sidebottom's impressive dedication to historical authenticity. It immensely refreshing to read the story of a historical character who doesn't look at the era in which he is living through the eyes of a modern reader. We see in this book the casual brutality of the Roman Empire, and though Marcus Clodius Ballista frowns on some of its excesses, he does so in a way that would be historically plausible (As a northern Barbarian he occasionally looks down on the decadence and treachery of the Romans). For the most part Sidebottom avoids the annoying habit present in so much historical fiction of making the heroes wholly good and the villains wholly bad. Some of the antagonists in this particular volume do seem a little cartoonishly evil, but for the most part the characters are complex people who occasionally do good things for bad reasons and bad things for good reasons.I was particularly impressed with his depiction of the persecutions of Christians. Sidebottom resists the modern temptation to be dismissive and cynical about historical Christianity, while also not shying away from the fact that these were utterly uncompromising people who could be very difficult to deal with. It's this almost obsessive attention to detail that makes these books so much fun to read. As someone who gets really annoyed by the slightest historical inaccuracy, I have found nothing at all to upset me in this book.But this level of detail has some drawbacks. Every chapter begins with a very long description of the surroundings, recent events, and the thoughts going through the character's mind. It usually takes two or three pages for anything at all to happen. I don't generally mind information dumps every now and then, but when the formula becomes as rigid as it is in this series it can seriously bog the story down. This is the only problem I've had with this book or any in the series, but it's a big enough problem that I almost gave up on the first book because of it and it has showed no signs of changing.If Dr. Sidebottom could just work on the rhythm of his stories, they would be nearly perfect.

This is volume 2 of Harry Sidebottom's Warrior of Rome series. It picks up the story of Ballista, the son of an Angle warlord who has been brought up at the imperial court as a hostage and become a Roman general, almost exactly where "Fire in the East" ended. I read this book almost three years ago, at a time when I did not post reviews. I have gone through it again today, and still found it almost as good as the first volume.Again, but perhaps even more than in "Fire in the East", this volume displays the author's grasp for the so-called Third century AD crisis. This was when the Roman Empire was threatened and attacked simultaneously on most of its frontiers and when some sixty individuals were proclaimed Emperor in one part or another of the Empire. This is a period on which we know comparatively little, but Sidebottom brings it magnificently to life. Specifically, this volume tells the story of the last years of Emperor Valerian and the disastrous campaign against the Sassanid King of Kings that lead to his capture and to the destruction of his army. It also tells the story of the specific usurpation of Macrinus and his two sons, after they had betrayed Valerian to the Persians.Another strong point of this book is to show both the growing influence of the Christians, especially in Asia and North Africa. Valerian resumed the persecutions against them, partly because he wanted to use them as scapegoats for his own failures against the Persians. Rome was seen as unsuccessful because the Christians had offended the Gods and betrayed the Emperor as they refused to sacrifice to the Gods and refused to bear arms. The persecutions at Ephesus really took place, although Ballista's role in them seems to have been invented by the author for the purpose of the story. The legend of the seven young men that had escaped the persecution and took refuge in a cave is also supposed to take place at this time. They supposedly woke up some seventy years latter without having aged, at the time of Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Emperor.Anyway, the story is exciting. It is also well-told and, above all, it "feels and sounds" real, which is always a sign that the author has pushed all the right buttons, regardless of the few liberties that he might have taken with the (rather sparse) historical record. This is a real page-turner, a book that you are likely to read until all hours and get somewhat carried away with it. The battle scenes are still just as great as in the first volume. I was just a little bit less convinced with the assassination attempts, which, of course, are all un successful. Anyway, this is a great piece of historical fiction and certainly one of the best I have read over the last few years or so.Highly recommended.