As erotic and violent as one would expect for a story of Ancient Rome and rebellion, the book offers a humanizing rendering...
A historical novel about Queen Boudica and the Iceni uprising from author Burch (Angels and Vampires, 2013).
It’s 60 A.D., and the Roman Empire extends westward to Brittania. Famously organized and militarily powerful, the Romans have a fairly secure hold on the local people. As Nero goes about his personal madness in the capital, the outreaches of the empire are relatively tranquil. Or so it might seem. After the suspicious death of her husband, Prasutagus, the fierce and beautiful Queen Boudica, leader of the Iceni tribe, is shocked to find the empire annexing her land. In answer to her protest, Boudica is flogged while her daughters are raped. If there were ever a time for the Iceni to rebel against the occupiers who instill harsh punishments and humiliating taxes, this would be it. There is, though, the thorny issue of the queen’s lover. Retired Centurion Marius Marcellinus is not only a respected soldier and master horseman, he is in love with the rebel queen. Can these two maintain their relationship as the world around them erupts in warfare and all varieties of degradation (from rape and pillaging to roasting small children and beheading corpses)? Thoughtful in its creation of a forbidden romance, the integration of Romans and locals is entirely plausible even if later bloodshed might suggest otherwise. Dipping into the sexually explicit (“ ‘Too many conquests that took his finest parts and wore them out,’ thought the queen as she took his broke dick and gave him a blowjob and the general spanked her buttocks”), the relationships of characters from many different worlds tend to be physically consummated. While physical pleasures and savageries permeate, grandiose blocks of dialogue slow momentum; e.g., “Thank you, brave Iceni warriors, for getting me safely to Verulamium. My twenty horsemen from Brigantines will take me to my army of four thousand countrymen waiting just outside the colony.” As the pace picks up in a final battle, readers familiar with the story of Queen Boudica will know what happens, though her fictionalized fate will come as a well-planned surprise.
As erotic and violent as one would expect for a story of Ancient Rome and rebellion, the book offers a humanizing rendering of the infamous Queen Boudica.Pub Date: July 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-1494460761
Page Count: 202
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Another success for the publishing phenom.
An abused boy fights back, escapes, then returns as an attorney to his beloved hometown, but just as he’s falling in love with a transplanted landscaper, a series of attacks from shadowy enemies jeopardizes their happiness.
“From the outside, the house in Lakeview Terrace looked perfect.” Which of course means that it wasn't. We're introduced to the horrifying Dr. Graham Bigelow, who beats his wife and, increasingly as the boy gets older, his son, Zane. On the night of Zane’s prom, a particularly savage attack puts him and his sister in the hospital, and his father blames Zane, landing him in jail. Then his sister stands up for him, enlisting the aid of their aunt, and everything changes, mainly due to Zane’s secret diaries. Nearly 20 years later, Zane leaves a successful career as a lawyer to return to Lakeview, where his aunt and sister live with their families, deciding to hang a shingle as a small-town lawyer. Then he meets Darby McCray, the landscaper who’s recently relocated and taken the town by storm, starting with the transformation of his family’s rental bungalows. The two are instantly intrigued by each other, but they move slowly into a relationship neither is looking for. Darby has a violent past of her own, so she is more than willing to take on the risk of antagonizing a boorish local family when she and Zane help an abused wife. Suddenly Zane and Darby face one attack after another, and even as they grow ever closer under the pressure, the dangers become more insidious. Roberts’ latest title feels a little long and the story is slightly cumbersome, but her greatest strength is in making the reader feel connected to her characters, so “unnecessary details” can also charm and engage.
Another success for the publishing phenom.Pub Date: July 9, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20709-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
Tame thriller, simply written—but Sparks’s name should sell it.
The megaselling writer of just-folks tearjerkers (Nights in Rodanthe, not reviewed, etc.) tries his hand at suspense—with lackluster results.
Her husband lost his fight against brain cancer, leaving Julie Barenson a young widow, and she still doesn’t quite know what to do with her life. But the Great Dane puppy that arrived shortly after Jim’s death, along with a suitably sentimental note, has grown up into her best pal (and guardian, just like Jim, who, the reader is assured, is watching over Julie from heaven). Now that Julie is finally ready to date, she finds slim pickings in Swansboro, North Carolina, on the Outer Banks. There’s Mike, an amiable jack-of-all-trades, failed musician, and the younger brother of Jim’s best friend—but not exactly ambitious. Still, Julie’s background hardly allows her to be too picky: she’s the daughter of an alcoholic, single, oversexed mother without two nickels to rub together. Then Richard Franklin, a consulting engineer on the Intracoastal Waterway, comes in to get his hair cut at the beauty shop. Julie dates him a few times, but there’s something odd about him. He’s awfully jealous, though he hardly knows her. And controlling. No one knows that he grew up in horrible circumstances: viciously battered by his drunken father, he hides a murderous rage at everything. Years ago, the cops thought his father’s death from carbon monoxide poisoning was an accident . . . and no one saw his son spit into his father’s grave. Foster care only hardened the boy, who beat up anyone who crossed him, attacked his college roommates, killed his first wife, assumed the identity of a man he murdered by the side of a lonely road . . . . Gee, could he be the guy who’s stalking Julie? Mike decides he’d better protect her. “Richard” is so nasty he might even shoot her dog. Julie endures the stalking and whatnot for a while, until the plot limps to its predictable conclusion.
Tame thriller, simply written—but Sparks’s name should sell it.Pub Date: April 8, 2003
ISBN: 0-446-52779-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
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