In Which I Post My First Review
You may recall, dear reader, that I resolved last week to begin reading. Not that I don't read now, but e-mails from concerned parents and essays from young students don't quite cut it as a steady diet. No, I resolved to read a book every week, and post my review here to my LiveJournal as a goad to stick to my guns. My putative schedule was to start reading on Sunday, finish the book on Saturday, and then post the review on Sunday morning. I'm a tad behind schedule, as you can see, but helping out TraumaWalker as he convalesces from his injury led to a late start to the proceedings, but I'm not too far behind for all that.
TraumaWalker gets better by the day - you can read his own account on his Facebook page - for which we're all very grateful. In other news, our varsity football team beat our big crosstown rivals BWood 31-0 on Friday to notch our first victory since 2001. Unfortunately, our JV team wasn't so lucky - we lost a hearbreaker 16-12. The performance was a big improvement over the shutout thrashing we suffered in last year's big loss. But I'm not a big believer in moral victories - this was tough to take. Especially since a number of Bwood players danced on our field after the game. You stay classy, guys.
But on to the matter at hand - Simon Scarrow's Eagle's Prophecy, a fast-paced and action adventure yarn set in the reign of the Emperor Claudius. Scarrow introduced his two protagonists, the Roman centurions Macro and Cato, six books ago. The first five novels were set in the Roman conquest of Britain, but this novel takes our boys south to the Adriatic coast, where they battle pirates in the course of a secret mission they're forced to undertake to avoid the repercussions of some nasty business that arose in Britain during the previous novel (I'll leave the details vague for those who might be interested in checking out the series).
Like Bernard Cornwell, with whom he has justifiably been compared, Scarrow is a master of bringing to life the confusion and terror of combat. Whether it's a desperate squad-level skirmish or a major set-piece battle, Scarrow's evocative descriptions are fresh, original, and engaging. The accounts of some writers of military fiction, whether historical or fantasy, tend to blur together in a predictable pattern of tired adjectives and routine actions, like a tedious parade-ground drill. Each fight Macro and Cato find themselves in, however, is unique. No small accomplishment for any writer!
As with Cornwell and Patrick O'Brien, the vivid descriptions of men trying to kill each other are, for all their significance to the plot, not the most important element of the book. Like Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper, or Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, the characters of Macro and Cato are what really set the book apart from the run of the mill. Macro - gruff, pragmatic, tough as leather and a brutal realist - is a career legionary who worked his way up to centurion by dint of years of hard fighting and flinty courage. Cato - well-educated, philosophical, and sometimes prone to idealism - is a former palace freedman who owes his quick rise from legionary to optio to centurion at least in part to patronage. The two men represent in a way the two main strands of Roman socio-political life, and their lively interactions serve as an engaging counterpoint to the thrilling battle scenes that anchor the book.
With historical figures like the future emperors Vitellius (portrayed here as a duplicitous snake) and Vespasian (in whom ambition wars wtih patriotism) making significant cameo roles, Scarrow pulls of the neat trick of leaving the reader with a solid understanding of Roman military and social history without ever seeming to lecture, something lovers of Lindsay Davis' Marcus Didius Falco novels will appreciate. Although Scarrow isn't the mystery writer that Davis is, there is intrigue enough in his books to keep the reader turning the pages.
I loved the first five of Scarrow's books, so it's no surprise I enjoyed this one, too. If you enjoy historical fiction with a military setting, or have in interest in Things Roman, you could do worse that to check out Scarrow's first novel, Under the Eagle.
Next up on the reading list: Cynthia Stokes Brown's Big History. Stay tuned...
TraumaWalker gets better by the day - you can read his own account on his Facebook page - for which we're all very grateful. In other news, our varsity football team beat our big crosstown rivals BWood 31-0 on Friday to notch our first victory since 2001. Unfortunately, our JV team wasn't so lucky - we lost a hearbreaker 16-12. The performance was a big improvement over the shutout thrashing we suffered in last year's big loss. But I'm not a big believer in moral victories - this was tough to take. Especially since a number of Bwood players danced on our field after the game. You stay classy, guys.
But on to the matter at hand - Simon Scarrow's Eagle's Prophecy, a fast-paced and action adventure yarn set in the reign of the Emperor Claudius. Scarrow introduced his two protagonists, the Roman centurions Macro and Cato, six books ago. The first five novels were set in the Roman conquest of Britain, but this novel takes our boys south to the Adriatic coast, where they battle pirates in the course of a secret mission they're forced to undertake to avoid the repercussions of some nasty business that arose in Britain during the previous novel (I'll leave the details vague for those who might be interested in checking out the series).
Like Bernard Cornwell, with whom he has justifiably been compared, Scarrow is a master of bringing to life the confusion and terror of combat. Whether it's a desperate squad-level skirmish or a major set-piece battle, Scarrow's evocative descriptions are fresh, original, and engaging. The accounts of some writers of military fiction, whether historical or fantasy, tend to blur together in a predictable pattern of tired adjectives and routine actions, like a tedious parade-ground drill. Each fight Macro and Cato find themselves in, however, is unique. No small accomplishment for any writer!
As with Cornwell and Patrick O'Brien, the vivid descriptions of men trying to kill each other are, for all their significance to the plot, not the most important element of the book. Like Richard Sharpe and Patrick Harper, or Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, the characters of Macro and Cato are what really set the book apart from the run of the mill. Macro - gruff, pragmatic, tough as leather and a brutal realist - is a career legionary who worked his way up to centurion by dint of years of hard fighting and flinty courage. Cato - well-educated, philosophical, and sometimes prone to idealism - is a former palace freedman who owes his quick rise from legionary to optio to centurion at least in part to patronage. The two men represent in a way the two main strands of Roman socio-political life, and their lively interactions serve as an engaging counterpoint to the thrilling battle scenes that anchor the book.
With historical figures like the future emperors Vitellius (portrayed here as a duplicitous snake) and Vespasian (in whom ambition wars wtih patriotism) making significant cameo roles, Scarrow pulls of the neat trick of leaving the reader with a solid understanding of Roman military and social history without ever seeming to lecture, something lovers of Lindsay Davis' Marcus Didius Falco novels will appreciate. Although Scarrow isn't the mystery writer that Davis is, there is intrigue enough in his books to keep the reader turning the pages.
I loved the first five of Scarrow's books, so it's no surprise I enjoyed this one, too. If you enjoy historical fiction with a military setting, or have in interest in Things Roman, you could do worse that to check out Scarrow's first novel, Under the Eagle.
Next up on the reading list: Cynthia Stokes Brown's Big History. Stay tuned...