A melodramatic foray into an extremely fictional ancient Rome. Twelve-year-old Aurelia is the daughter of Caesar, ruler of Rome around the third century. He presents her with a tiger cub, defanged and with claws trimmed, and Julius, the slave who trains and cares for him. She doesn’t know that the cub has a littermate, kept bullied and hungry for the games at the Colosseum. Although the details of Roman life seem to be historically accurate, the tone is completely wrong. The animals are anthropomorphized to a fare-thee-well (think the recent movie novelization Two Brothers); Aurelia’s distaste for the bloodshed of the games, both animal and human, and her interest in the persecuted Christians seem forced; and the actions of the slave Julius, who loves Aurelia, are simply not believable for that place and time. The climax finds Julius facing both the tame and wild tiger brothers in the Colosseum—and everyone lives. A much better journey into this era would be Caroline Lawrence’s Roman Mysteries series. (Historical fiction. 10-14)
