An entertaining sword-and-politics saga full of engrossing period detail and sharp drama.
Ancient Rome boils with sordid power plays, constant intrigue, full moon rituals, and eruptions of bloodshed in Eckert’s sprawling historical novel.
The author paints a panorama of the Roman Empire in the year 193, starting with the murder of the vile Emperor Commodus by Laetus, commander of the Praetorian Guard, after the leader attempts to rape Laetus’ betrothed. Pertinax is promptly elected emperor by the Senate, and he proves modest and competent but also impolitic and stingy; after he fails to pay the city watchmen their customary bribes, he’s unceremoniously stabbed to death. The Praetorians then massacre the city watch, sell the emperorship to one Didius Julianus for 25 gold pieces per Guardsman, and force the Senate to vote him in at spearpoint. The loathed and inept Julianus tries everything to keep his shaky hold on power, including drinking the blood of a rabbit sacrificed to the goddess Hecate. But powerful rivals—the governors of Britannia and Egypt; the rough-hewn general Septimius Severus—soon try to overthrow him with their legions. Throughout the upheavals, Eckert’s narrative focuses on the household of Sen. Marcus Tullius, his daughter Tullia, and those they’ve enslaved as they navigate a time when a careless comment could get one branded an emperor’s enemy. As it portrays real events (with a few embellishments), Eckert’s tale steeps readers in all things Roman—from wedding ceremonies to military drills to Rome’s traffic jams—and ably dissects a society structured around complex hierarchies and in which survival requires currying favor with the powerful; even casual conversations and actions are calculated for advantage. The author’s vivid, nuanced prose conveys the subtle tensions that besiege his characters as well as the brutality that awaits those who incorrectly parse them: “I order that his lying tongue be torn out by the roots, and that he be hung by his hands from a bar and flogged until death,” declares a judge of the loser in a lawsuit. The result is a captivating page-turner.
An entertaining sword-and-politics saga full of engrossing period detail and sharp drama.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2022
ISBN: 9781667873176
Page Count: 801
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
A moving, hilarious reminder that parenthood, just like life, means constant change.
During an annual beach vacation, a mother confronts her past and learns to move forward.
Her family’s annual trip to Cape Cod is always the highlight of Rocky’s year—even more so now that her children are grown and she cherishes what little time she gets with them. Rocky is deep in the throes of menopause, picking fights with her loving husband and occasionally throwing off her clothes during a hot flash, much to the chagrin of her family. She’s also dealing with her parents, who are crammed into the same small summer house (with one toilet that only occasionally spews sewage everywhere) and who are aging at an alarmingly rapid rate. Rocky’s life is full of change, from her body to her identity—she frequently flashes back to the vacations of years past, when her children were tiny. Although she’s grateful for the family she has, she mourns what she’s lost. Newman (author of the equally wonderful We All Want Impossible Things, 2022) imbues Rocky’s internal struggles with importance and gravity, all while showcasing her very funny observations about life and parenting. She examines motherhood with a raw honesty that few others manage—she remembers the hard parts, the depths of despair, panic, and anxiety that can happen with young children, and she also recounts the joy in a way that never feels saccharine. She has a gift for exploring the real, messy contradictions in human emotions. As Rocky puts it, “This may be the only reason we were put on this earth. To say to each other, I know how you feel.”
A moving, hilarious reminder that parenthood, just like life, means constant change.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780063345164
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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