The Eagle’s Prey by Simon Scarrow
The Romans move to defeat Caratacus in a final decisive battle. But when the battle does not go as plan, blame falls upon Macro and Cato’s unit. Their new commander claims he will take responsibility for the defeat, but instead shifts it onto others, including Macro.
To show that the Romans will not tolerate a lapse like this, General Plautius orders a decimation of the unit, where soldiers will draw lots to see who is executed in brutal fashion. Though they did everything they could to win the battle, now Macro and Cato find themselves in danger of losing their lives to the army they have dedicated themselves to.
This was the book where I decided to give up on this series. I had been mainly ambivalent towards the series for the last couple of books, liking the author’s style of writing, but finding it hard to root for any of the characters because of my feelings towards Caratacus and his cause.
I had that problem again here, wanting the Roman army to fail in their attempts to kill Caratacus, as well as hating them all for how they deal with the Britons as a whole.
Added to that, I just had trouble with the whole decimation plot device. Of course one of the main characters was going to be chosen to be executed and of course it wouldn’t happen. Not to give too much away, but when a soldier in the Roman army flees from his execution and is involved in the death of a Roman soldier who is part of the group sent to track him down, I have trouble believing that anything other than execution would really be waiting for him at the end. But of course - without reading but based on summaries of future books - the character won’t die and will move on with their life in Rome. I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief on this plot point so gave up before reading exactly how he managed to win clemency. I doubt it would have changed my mind.
Grade: F