Pompeii by Robert Harris

By Robert Harris

I’m definitely in a “Pompeii” mood! Last night on the way home I listened to the thrilling climax of Robert Harris' "Pompeii". I have read several of his other books ("Fatherland" and "Archangel") but this one is by far the best. His characters were wonderfully genuine. Now I will have a detailed mental image of Pliny the Elder each time I read something about him and I have added Attilius to my pantheon of great fictional Roman heroes. The descriptions of Vesuvius' "manifestations" were so vivid. They made me recall the images I saw on television of people in Portland, Oregon when Mt. St. Helens erupted – slogging along the streets through drifts of ash and the sky so dark and swirling with debris that the cars had to have their lights on in the middle of the day.

Anyway, a great read – I highly recommend it!

The Spartan by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

By Valerio Massimo Manfredi

A few days ago I finished reading "Spartan" by Valerio Manfredi. This is my first exposure to his work as I have but have not yet read his best-selling Alexander trilogy. I'm afraid I was not overly impressed, although the story was definitely readable. Most of the characters, with the exception of Talos, were not well developed, which in turn served to diminish the impact of some of the climactic moments in the book. The battle of Thermopylae was passed over so quickly, it did not create sufficient pathos when the two young Spartan warriors, ordered by Leonidas to deliver a message to the ephors, are ostracized by the Spartan community and labeled with the scornful title of "he who trembles". Likewise, the battle of Plataea was not portrayed in enough detail to grant the sacrifice of Brithos the emotional impact it should have had on Talos or the reader.

Afterward, as Talos traipsed around after Pausanias as a mercenary, the plot seemed to wander almost aimlessly for a time before Talos finally returned to Sparta and took up the mantle of his destiny.

The "love" scenes (if you can call them that) were right out of the fifties. Antinea steps out of her tunic and the scene changes and it’s the next morning. They seemed especially vacant after having just read Jennifer Macaire’s colorful Alexander time-travel novel, Children In The Morning.

However, The Spartan was far more interesting to me than Thornton Wilder’s Ides of March (I know that’s probably sacrilegious but that book just dragged for me) and stimulated my interest in further study of the helot conflict with the Spartans. I found one of Paul Cartledge’s definitive books on Sparta, The Spartans: The World of the Warrior-Heroes of Ancient Greece, from Utopia to Crisis and Collapse, at a bargain price on Half.com so I ordered it to continue my exploration of this culture.

Children of the Morning by Jennifer MacAire

I treated myself to a copy of Children in the Morning for a Christmas present and was not disappointed. Like Jennifer's two previous novels in the series, I found the characters believable and their relationships well developed. Alexander is a passionate hero with human failings just as I had always envisioned him and I enjoy the depiction of this unusual "family" group that has grown up around him during his efforts to explore the edges of the known world. Although battles are described, the emphasis is on the developing human relationships that I find as important to history (even alternate history) as events.

In this installment, Alexander and Ashley are in India and they experience the culture's exotic combination of beauty, courage, and treachery as they struggle through the monsoons, confront the formidable war elephants of Porus, and outwit brutal Brahmin rebels. Ashley must also face the reality of Alexander's looming death and consider the possibilities and consequences of cheating fate.