Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2140133 in Books
• Published on: 2007
• Format: Import
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

Customer Reviews

Worse than Romanitas!
I was lucky, i got both the Romanitas books out of the library, i didn't spend a cent to read them; if i had, i would be truly annoyed.

This book is even worse than the first book, Romanitas, and that in itself is actually an achievement. Once again we are treated to an inadequatly described and inconsistant world peopled by wooden characters that we just don't care about. So, in this episode, Marcus of course is given imperial power after uncle faustus has a stroke. So of course the ever present cardboard cutout baddie, Drusus, is plotting and scheming to take the power for himself. Oddly, Una's mysterious power seems to be downplayed in this book as the author probably realised that it would ruin the whole story if Una could just read drusus' intentions and reveal the whole plot. So, the logical inconsistancy in this novel is that Una's "gift" hardly features at all. Also, anyone who was waiting to see if anything about the origin of Una's and Sulien's gifts is revealed will be disapointed: nothing at all. Also, no more detail about Una's previous life as a slave.

So, obviously Marcus and Una have to get together and of course there is a wedge driven between them by circumstances (standard soapie formula: boy meets girl; boy and girl break up; and in the third book i suppose they get back together), so parts of the book degenerate into soapie like scenes and dialogue. The background setting of rising tensions with the other (implausible) superpower, Japan (who has just developed atomic weapons apparently), is so lacking in tension or suspense that you really don't care if its resolved or not (cuban missile crisis, this ain't). Also, is there any logic in a superpower building a hadrian's wall type wall, across half of north america to contain another superpower, both of whom have air power? No, not even a modern maginot wall type wall, but a big roman wall with forts and watchtowers; there is no logic, reasoning or research behind that plot device and many others.

So anyway, there is so little to recommend this second book that if Amazon gave me the choice to give it no stars, sadly it would have got a big fat zero. I say sadly because this and the previous book had so much potential that wasn't made use of.

Enjoyable book
This book is the second of the series. The first is "Romanitas". It is cross between s.f. and historical novel. The premise is that the Roman Empire has lingered into modern times. It is enjoyable and fairly rich in details.