A lavishly detailed, character-driven tale about the Roman world.
A debut historical novel captures the last years of the Roman Republic from varying perspectives.
The story opens in Rome in 90 B.C.E. with the young Julius Caesar being tutored on the fall of the ancient empires of the Mediterranean. The narrative charts Caesar’s development from eager scholar to esteemed soldier who was awarded a civic crown for saving the lives of his fellow fighters. The story of Caesar’s ongoing rise to power is but one thread in a larger fabric. Ruppelt recognizes that “a huge part” of Caesar’s “fighting force and camp followers consisted of people from all walks of life and all over the Mediterranean.” He therefore sets about creatively reimagining the lives of these individuals. The novel tells the story of Ozalkis and his nephew Adherbal, two Numidian archers who join the Ninth Legion after their family is slaughtered during a tribal raid on their home. The two men are assigned to Hispania, where they are to fight the Celts. The author also examines the theater of war from a Celtic perspective with a focus on female warriors such as Aina, who is battling for her clan’s survival. Other characters, like Timon, a slave, allow Ruppelt to explore a broad cross section of Roman society, from the most powerful to the most vulnerable. This ambitious epic of more than 400 pages skillfully manages an extensive and diverse cast of characters to illuminate a complex, multicultural Roman world. The author has an exceptional eye for detail, and his corresponding depth of research is particularly evident when describing Celtic combat training, where future warriors are instructed on the “twelve doors to the soul.” To discover one of these vulnerable points in their opponents, the young boys and girls are instructed: “Feel the back of your skulls, where the bone ends, and the soft tissue starts. Yes, that’s the point.” Ruppelt’s use of informative and plausible dialogue heightens the narrative effect, transporting readers to the training ground. It is only on occasion that conversations betray a contemporary tenor, for example when the “newly minted commoner” Pulcher comments: “I partied with his younger sister.” Nevertheless, this book, illustrated with maps, diagrams, and a family tree, is a thorough and refreshingly far-reaching interpretation of Roman society that should be of great interest to aficionados of the genre.
A lavishly detailed, character-driven tale about the Roman world.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73290-760-7
Page Count: 428
Publisher: C.K. RUPPELT
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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