THE FAR ARENA

by Richard Ben Sapir ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 7, 1978

The premise is at least as old as Twain and Verne: what happens when an unsuspecting time-traveler, here the premier gladiator of Rome under Domitian (circa 80 A.D.), wakes up in a mind-blowingly alien environment. A U.S. oil company in the Arctic digs up this gladiator, five-foot-tall but perfectly shaped Eugeni, in a block of ice; and dour geologist Lew McCardle quickly unloads him on Dr. Semyon Petrovich, a Russian low-temperature-biology expert working in Oslo. Dr. P., of course, somehow brings this thawed-out fossil to life, as we hear the comatose Eugeni remembering his life story, especially how he committed a sin against the gods by declining to kill his rival-friend Publius in the arena (thus causing a riot). And how he was therefore humiliated and exiled to the northern barbarian-lands, where he wound up poisoned and frozen. Translating Eugeni's mutterings is language whiz Sister Olay, an ambivalent nun, who at first tries to hide the time-travel truth from the now-conscious gladiator. But soon Eugeni is given the facts, and he takes the news rather well, since he's immersed in long discussions with Sister Olay about comparative morality and early Christian history (Eugeni and his Hebrew wife were wed by St. Peter). And after diminutive Eugeni proves his gladiatorial prowess by nattily disemboweling France's finest duelist, he and Sister take off for Rome and Pompeii, on their own now since the Russian and the American have washed their hands of the problem (each of them has undergone a quickie identity crisis, emerging a new man thanks to Eugeni). Though obviously talented, Sapir doesn't know quite how to structure or fill out the intriguing possibilities here: there's too much mechanical alternating between ancient Rome and modern Oslo; a style that slips from solid to pretentious to silly (""Let me have your body. You are not using it anyhow,"" says hot Empress Domitia to Eugeni); and far too much talk in both time frames. Some vivid, persuasively ugly gladiatorial atmosphere and some nifty pseudo-science touches--but, for the most, a promising comic-book idea too larded up for breeze-through entertainment, too blurrily conceived for anything really provocative.

Pub Date: Aug. 7, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Seaview--dist. by Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION