Centurion, Simon Scarrow

Publishers: Headline

Pages: 533

Main Characters:

Marco, Cato

Centurion picks up after Eagle in the Sand and sees our two heroes posted on the Eastern frontier of the Empire. After training their troops to the standard expected in the Roman Legions. Marco and Cato must now focus their attention on the huge Parthian army massing on the borders of Palmyra. Palmyra itself is at risk of revolting and as a measure to stop this happening, Rome sends in troops to protect the royal household of Palmyra. Seeing this as an aggressive manoeuvre, the Parthians invade. Marco and Cato must fight their way through a lengthy siege and a gruesome pitched battle to push back the Parthian hordes and protect Rome’s dominance in the East.

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The Gladiator, Simon Scarrow

Publishers: Headline

Pages: 366

Main Characters:

Marco, Cato

After a successful campaign in Palmyra and finally pushing back the invading Parthian armies.  Marco and Cato have finally earned the right to return to Rome and seek a more lucrative position in the Roman Army. However sailing off the coast of Southern Crete, their small transport is caught in the middle of a devastating earthquake. Limping into the harbour on the island of Crete, they find that the earthquake has destroyed whole cities and towns. In the chaos that follows, a slave uprising emerges with the gladiator and ex-pirate Ajax (from The Eagles Prophecy) surfacing as its leader. As the rebellion picks up momentum and more slaves and equipment become available, the rebels soon defeat the island’s garrison forces. It soon falls to Marco and Cato to rally the troops in the province and quash the rebels. But will they succeed or will the rebellion and Ajax be to powerful?

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The Legion, Simon Scarrow

Publishers: Headline

Pages: 366

Main Characters:

Marco, Cato, Ajax

The slave rebellion on Crete has ended but its leader Ajax has gotten away. With permission from the governor of Crete, Marco and Cato set out on their journey around the Mediterranean in search of the ex-gladiator. Their search leads them to Egypt, where they find out Ajax is not trying to raise another rebel army as they expected but is going to strike Rome in its heart. Marco and Cato must stop Ajax’s plot or the whole Roman Empire could crumble under hunger and rebellion.

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A Spot Of Bother, Mark Haddon

Publishers: Vintage

Pages: 503

Main Characters:

George, Jean, Katie, Jamie

A Spot of Bother is the second novel from author Mark Haddon. Most of you will know of Haddon’s other novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which has been widely acclaimed and even placed as a top fifty book to read before you die! A Spot of Bother follows the life of George Hall, a recent retiree and hypochondriac! Obsessed with the belief that a skin lesion on his side is cancerous, even though his doctor has diagnosed it as eczema, George decides to take the matter into his own hands. After nearly killing himself by trying to cut off the lesion with a pair of scissors, George thinks his life couldn’t get much worse. How wrong he is. George soon finds out that his wife Jean has been having an affair with his neighbour and his daughter Katie is marrying a man who George and the rest of the family don’t approve of. The novel is about how George copes with these massive changes in his life after living the same routine every day until his retirement.

This was a good novel and a nice easy read. It did have a very humorous side to it as the main character George is the typical stubborn old man type of character. But there was also a very sad side to this book, as we see George’s life fall apart as all of these events happen and he has no control over them. I thought this book was not unlike How to Be Good by Nick Hornby. This is because it is set around the same sort of plot. Wife has an affair, husband has a mental breakdown and it is quite funny but at the same time quite sad.  Because of this similarity I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed Haddon’s The Curious Incident. It made me feel this book was a lot less unique because the plot was so similar to How to be Good. But to be fair, The Curious Incident is an absolutely brilliant book and I have not yet read anything like it, so it might be a little unfair to compare A Spot of Bother to it.

Like I said above, this was a good book and made for some nice easy reading but I just didn’t enjoy it as much as The Curious Incident. I would suggest it to anyone who is a fan of Nick Hornby, because as I’ve said the style of this book is very similar to that of Hornby’s. I am looking forward to seeing what Haddon’s next novel will be as A Spot of Bother and The Curious Incident are so very different. It will be interesting to see where Haddon will go next!

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1000 Years of Annoying the French, Stephen Clarke

Publishers: Bantam Press

Pages:  510

Main Characters:

William the Conqueror, Henry V, Joan of Arc,
Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle

1000 Years of Annoying the French is the brilliant book from Stephen Clarke. Clarke, an English writer living and working in Paris wrote this book about the relationship between the English speaking word and the French over the last one thousand years. Not exactly a history book. Clarke gets the balance of historical data and humour perfectly, making this book appeal to a much wider audience than a normal history book about France and England would. The book also addresses some ‘facts’ that we take for granted as been false or misguided. The examples Clarke gives in the blurb are:

- ‘Was the Battle of Hastings a French Victory? Non! William the Conqueror was Norman and hated the French!’

- ‘Were Brits really responsible for the death of Joan of Arc? Non! The French sentenced her to death for wearing trousers!’

- ‘Was the guillotine a French invention? Non! It was invented in Yorkshire!’

You can see why the book would be so attractive to an Englishman! We English will take any chance we can to get one over the French and this book does that. I don’t mean that this book is anti-French in any way. I think many French people would get a few good laughs from reading this book. But what I will say is that it is definitely pro-British!

Funny, entertaining and educational, this was a brilliant book. I would suggest this book to anyone who has a general interest in British history. I read it because I had an interest in the Hundred Years war and absolutely loved it. Besides, it is a nice easy read and not too dense as some history books tend to be. Great book can’t wait to read Clarke’s other Anglo-French novel A Year in the Merde.

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The Fort, Bernard Cornwell

Publishers: HarperCollins

Pages: 464

Main Characters:

Lieutenant John Moore, Paul Revere

The Fort is one of Cornwell’s latest novels and tells the tale of the Penobscot expedition of 1779. Where a small garrison of seven hundred British troops held an unfinished fort on the coast of Maine from a determined rebel army. The rebel army, sent by the state of Massachusetts, consisted of nine hundred men along with forty two ships. The Fort tells the story from the British and American sides as they both focus on capturing or keeping Fort George.

For me, I think this was one of my least favourite books Bernard Cornwell has written. I think it lacked the grandeur that his other novels have. What I mean by this is that most of his other novels are set during a certain period of history. His Saxon Tales are set in the period of the Viking invasion, his Grail Quest is set in the period of the Hundred Years war and his Sharpe novels are set in the Napoleonic era. Now I know some people will say “well, The Fort is set in the era of the American Revolution” and it is, but it is just focused on the assault on Fort George which I think is a bit too narrow. I think if this book included more of the history from the other parts of the American Revolution then I would have found it a lot more entertaining.

That’s not to say it was a bad book. As usual the detail Cornwell puts into this book is as good as any other. His description of the cove where Fort George is placed is also excellent and really helps you imagine the landscape the rebels and the British fought over. But, unlike his other novels I didn’t feel there was a defined main character, which for me is one of my favourite parts of Cornwell’s writing, there’s always a hero! I think that Cornwell focuses on numerous characters in this book because they are all key people in the revolutionary war. However for someone like me who does not know that much about the war, these names go ‘straight over my head’ and the importance of the characters is lost on me. I know this might sound abit ignorant (and it is!) I should look up who these people are, but to be honest, this book gave me no motivation to do so.

Like I said, this wasn’t a bad book but I just didn’t seem to connect with it the way I have done with Cornwell’s other books. I think if you are interested in the Revolutionary war then you would like this book much more than me. Maybe if Cornwell brings out a sequel and elaborates on how the Penobscot expedition affected the outcome of the War of Independence, then I would enjoy it more.

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Hannibal: Enemy of Rome, Ben Kane

Publishers: Arrow Books Ltd

Pages: 576

Main Characters:

Hanno, Quintus, Bostar, Sapho,

 Fabricius, Malchus,

Set at the start of the Second Punic Wars, Hannibal: Enemy of Rome tells the tale of two very different people who share the same destiny. The first is that of a young Carthaginian called Hanno and the second is that of a young Roman aristocrat called Quintus. The novel starts with Hanno’s tale as he and his friend Suni ignore their fathers demand and go off fishing. The shoals of tunny are huge and the boys catch dozens of the expensive fish which will bring them a profit back in Carthage. To celebrate their record catch the boys share an amphora of wine and fall asleep, awaking hours later to be adrift at sea miles from their home. After been lost in the ocean for a few days the boys are eventually found by pirates who sell them into slavery in Italy. Originally meant to be gladiators, Hanno is bought by a young aristocrat because of his exceptional skills with languages, the name of the aristocrat is Quintus.

Quintus’ tale starts with him coming into manhood. To prove that he is man, Quintus and his father go bear hunting. After successfully killing the bear, Quintus is now seen as a grown man and allowed to take more control over the management of his father’s farm and also allowed to train to become a cavalry officer in the Roman army. One of his new duties of been a man is to go to the slave market in Capua and pick out a new household slave.  Quintus decides to pick a young Carthaginian slave because of his understanding of Latin and Greek. From this part on, Hanno and Quintus’ tale takes a dramatic twist, which sees them change from master and slave, to friends and then to enemies.  It takes them from been boys to men as they both fight for their countries in a war that could wipe Rome and the Roman civilisation off the map.

The reason I choose to read this book was because it did not look like your usual Roman novel. I have read the Roman novels from Simon Scarrow, Anthony Riches and Conn Iggulden and they all have the same thing in common, they are all written from a Roman perspective. Don’t get me wrong, I loved each and every one of those novels but I think Kane’s idea of writing the book from the point of view of a Carthaginian was a refreshing change. It was a great book! The story was brilliant as we saw two people who should be enemies become friends and then have to end that friendship as the war between Carthage and Rome began. The thing I was most impressed with in this book was the amount of detail Kane put into it. Firstly the descriptions of the scenery in this book are breath-taking as Kane paints a clear picture of what cities such as Carthage, Rome and Capua looked like. As well as the scenery, I thought Kane’s description of the units in each army were also brilliant. Kane clearly defined what the difference between each unit was and how it was used, which only added to the book when imaging the battle scenes within it. It was amazing that Kane could describe these things so well , as much of the material that was written at the time of the Punic Wars is now lost. But through careful research and some of his own rational thinking, Kane fills in the gaps of history perfectly in this book, making it excellent to read.

I would suggest this book to anyone who is a fan of Roman fiction and likes authors such as Simon Scarrow, Anthony Riches and Conn Iggulden. As I said above, it is different from these novels as it is written from the ‘enemy of Rome’s’ perspective but it still has the immense quality that these novels have.  Brilliant book, can’t wait for Kane to bring out its sequel!

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