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
An eccentric, well-written small-town novel jam-packed with appealing characters and their dreams.
When a photo booth–type machine in the grocery store starts spitting out predictions of people’s true callings, the residents of Deerfield, Louisiana, are deeply affected.
“In the way that aspiring novelists might like to imagine their work someday being discussed in a sophomore literature class…or the way philosophers like to chart the evolution of thought from Socrates to Plato to Jay-Z…Douglas also liked to imagine himself one day becoming part of some traceable lineage.” Douglas Hubbard, a happily married high school history teacher, has a fantasy of becoming a famous jazz trombone player. He’s even signed up for lessons. Unlike the other dreamers in his little town, he came up with this idea all by himself, on his 40th birthday. His wife and many of his neighbors, on the other hand, are carrying around little blue slips of paper produced by a machine called the DNAMIX. They say things like ROYALTY, CARPENTER, LOVER, and MAGICIAN, and because of them the school principal, the mayor, and many others in Deerfield are quitting their jobs, buying costumes, and planning major life changes. There’s something a little strange about Walsh’s follow-up to his remarkable first novel, My Sunshine Away (2015). On one hand, it has a warm, folksy, Fannie Flagg–type feeling, complete with John Prine references galore (the title is one) and a goofy touch of magic. On the other hand, like the author’s debut, it addresses very serious and disturbing issues. It opens with the death of a teenager, as experienced by his twin, and later adds intimations of a school shooting, a gang rape, and a terrible revenge plot. Both aspects are well handled, but do they really go together? When you get a bereaved dad dressed up in a ludicrous cowboy outfit intervening to rescue his son from being gunned down by the police you have to wonder.
An eccentric, well-written small-town novel jam-packed with appealing characters and their dreams.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1848-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Strangely stuffy and muted.
The little-known story of the Black woman who supervised J. Pierpont Morgan’s storied library.
It's 1905, and financier J.P. Morgan is seeking a librarian for his burgeoning collection of rare books and classical and Renaissance artworks. Belle da Costa Greene, with her on-the-job training at Princeton University, seems the ideal candidate. But Belle has a secret: Born Belle Marion Greener, she is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard, and she's passing as White. Her mother, Genevieve, daughter of a prominent African American family in Washington, D.C., decided on moving to New York to live as White to expand her family’s opportunities. Richard, an early civil rights advocate, was so dismayed by Genevieve’s decision that he left the family. As Belle thrives in her new position, the main source of suspense is whether her secret will be discovered. But the stakes are low—history discloses that the career-ending exposure she feared never came. There are close calls. J.P. is incensed with her but not because of her race: She considered buying a Matisse. Anne Morgan, J.P.’s disgruntled daughter, insinuates that Belle has “tropical roots,” but Belle is perfectly capable of leveraging Anne’s own secrets against her. Leverage is a talent of Belle’s, and her ruthless negotiating prowess—not to mention her fashion sense and flirtatious mien—wins her grudging admiration and a certain notoriety in the all-White and male world of curators and dealers. Though instructive about both the Morgan collection and racial injustice, the book is exposition-laden and its dialogue is stilted—the characters, particularly Belle, tend to declaim rather than discuss. The real Belle left scant records, so the authors must flesh out her personal life, particularly her affair with Renaissance expert Bernard Berenson and the sexual tension between Belle and Morgan. But Belle’s mask of competence and confidence, so ably depicted, distances readers from her internal clashes, just as her veneer must have deterred close inquiry in real life.
Strangely stuffy and muted.Pub Date: June 29, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-10153-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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