Battle for Rome (Audible Audio Edition) Ian Ross Jonathan Keeble Lamplight Audio Books
Download As PDF : Battle for Rome (Audible Audio Edition) Ian Ross Jonathan Keeble Lamplight Audio Books
The Roman Empire is on the brink of civil war. Only Maxentius, tyrant of Rome, stands between the emperor Constantine and supreme power in the west. Aurelius Castus, promoted from the ranks for valour, is now a tribune in Constantine's army. But as Constantine becomes increasingly devoted to Christianity, Castus is forced to ask himself whether he is backing the wrong man....
The coming war will decide the fate of empire, but also expose shadowy realms of treachery at the heart of Rome itself.
Battle for Rome (Audible Audio Edition) Ian Ross Jonathan Keeble Lamplight Audio Books
The best volume so far in this excellent series. Ian Ross is getting better and better. HIs characters are well crafted and he does not let the battle scenes overshadow the overarching, character-driven narrative. Can't wait to get my hands on the next installment of this riveting portrayal of the Imperial in the Age of Constantine!Product details
|
Tags : Amazon.com: Battle for Rome (Audible Audio Edition): Ian Ross, Jonathan Keeble, Lamplight Audio: Books, ,Ian Ross, Jonathan Keeble, Lamplight Audio,Battle for Rome,Lamplight Audio,B01K7U9A7Q
People also read other books :
- Jesus Friend of Children edition by Skip Heitzig Religion Spirituality eBooks
- All She Ever Wanted edition by Barbara Freethy Romance eBooks
- When All Hope Is Lost The Reluctant Grooms Book 9 edition by Anne Gallagher Literature Fiction eBooks
- When Disaster Strikes Home! 101 Ways to Protect Your Family From Unthinkable Emergencies eBook Norris Beren
- TWO STORIES edition by Paul Le Mat Romance eBooks
Battle for Rome (Audible Audio Edition) Ian Ross Jonathan Keeble Lamplight Audio Books Reviews
This very entertaining book by this fine author is the 3rd instalment of the wonderful and exciting "Twilight of the Empire" series.
The historical details explained in the author's note are very well researched and described, and once more the real events that took place are superbly outlined within this book.
Once again the storytelling is of an absolute top-quality, it's so engrossing that you don't want to put it down but read it from start to finish in one go.
Also the interaction between the characters, real or fictional, is really fascinating, for it makes the story so thrilling that it comes alive with so much pace and conviction.
This book starts off in the year AD 311, but the main story unfolds during the year AD 312 in which our main character the now Tribune Aurelius Castus, he's been promoted for his bravery for and loyalty to the Emperor Constantine, is struggling to come to terms with the fact that suspicions are circulating about the behaviour of his aristocratic wife.
Everybody knows that the coming war will decide the fate of the Empire, but at the same time Castus's home troubles will carry him into the heart of Rome and all it's shadowy realms of treachery, where he will also have to fight hard and do his utmost to survive this treacherous evil.
What follows is a very thrilling book with greatly pictured gruesome fighting scenes and murderous events at the heart of the Roman Empire.
This is once more a most fascinating story about the Roman Empire by this author, and this is a book that I wish to call as a "Superb Historical Read"!
Absolutely fantastic. Cannot wait for the next one.
This is the third book in Ian Ross’ Twilight of Empire Series which takes place during the beginning of the fourth century AD and is focused on Constantine’s rise to power and conquest of the Roman Empire. This book is about his invasion and conquest of Italy, with the climax being the battle of the Milvian Bridge in October 312 AD, at the end of a long and hard campaign that saw Constantine and his army cross the Alps and overwhelm the forces of his rival Emperor Maxentius. This is certainly one of the best pieces of historical fiction that I have read over the past year or so. It is as good as the two previous volumes in the Series although reading these two is not necessarily a prerequisite to reading this one. I can think of at least four reasons to praise this book and strongly recommend it. These are the attention and care taken in setting the historical context, the plot, the pace of this action-filled book and the characterisation.
The first thing that I appreciated was, once again, the trouble that the author has taken with “getting the historical context right”, including details of Roman military equipment, clothing (both military and civilian) and Roman monuments. The description of the newly completed (at the time) Baths of Diocletian in Rome is one example among many others. Among these others are the building efforts of Maxentius in Rome, but also what seems to have been his popularity with its inhabitants. Also interesting is the picture that Ian Ross draws of the Roman Senators, or at least of some of their ultra-rich leaders. While they has been increasingly side lined from military commands and higher civil service positions since Emperor Gallienus, their wealth and networks still allowed them to wield sufficient influence so that no candidate to supreme power and no incumbent Emperor could afford to ignore them. Their centres of interest – preserving their huge wealth and influence – and the extent to which they were ready to go in order to achieve this, is also particularly well shown and regardless of whether the individual Senators that you come across in the book are all historical characters (some may be fictional).
For those interested in the Roman Army, this book, though a novel, will also give you a feel of some of its evolutions and changes at the time. I will mention just two examples, although there a more than that scattered across the book. One is the description of the “Second Britannica”, the new model field army legion that Aurelius Castus (the Hero) is given command of. This thousand-strong legion is made up of detachments from two old style legions stationed in Britain, including VI Victrix (the hero’s former legion) which was stationed in Eboracum (modern York). While initially made up of troops recruited and serving in Britain, its ethnic composition would change over time, with losses made up by new recruits coming from wherever it was stationed, and it would become a separate, permanent and self-standing unit of its own. Another feature, also illustrated through “Second Britannica”, is that equipment may not have been completely uniform and troops would do with whatever was available on the spot. The point is illustrated by having some of the legion’s men equipped with old-fashioned but still very serviceable armour because this was the most readily available and there may not have been enough mail shirts or scale armour for all.
As for the events themselves, a number of features are outstanding and need to be emphasised. One (hence the title of this review) is that, despite all the post-war propaganda on the inevitability of Constantine’s victory, this was far from assured and achieving it was no stroll in the park. Constantine’s army had to fight all the way and paid a high price, something that is very well shown in the book. Many of Maxentius’ troops were just as though, well-equipped, well-trained and good than those of Constantine. In particular, the battle of Verona seems to have been very hard fought with heavy casualties on both sides. It did see the death of Maxentius’ best general and the destruction of most of his battle-hardened army. Maxentius’ decision to march out from behind the recently strengthened walls of Rome and offer battle despite two previous defeats, lower morale and an army of uneven quality that contained recently levied troops, have puzzled historians. Among the most likely are those used by Ian Ross, showing once again how carefully he seems to have researched his subject matter.
The fact that this was in effect a civil war between two sons of Augustii who had both seized power after their respective fathers’ demise is well-described. It is also well introduced by the author who has his hero – a Pannonian tribune – come across in two instances other fellow Pannonians serving Maxentius either as Praetorians or as part of his own old crack unit. I found the second event quite moving in that it takes place on the battlefield, after the battle. In both cases, it seems that the author’s purpose was to illustrate the particular horrors that even battle-hardened soldiers could experience in a civil war when forced to fight one another because of the ambitions of their respective warlords.
Another in teresting feature is the way Ian Ross has chosen to treat what later Christian sources, eager to show Constantine's support, presented as his almost overnight conversion to Christianity. The author has preferred to show this as an ongoing process and has significantly toned down the role of Christians in these events and the influence that was mostly yet to build over the Emperor. While this may be just one interpretation among others, I could not help finding it more credible than others.
Then there is the plot itself, which I also found rather excellent. While the mix of political intrigue, spying and battlefield action is not in itself original, with numerous authors writing “swords and sandals” novels using it, the way this is delivered is particularly entertaining and well crafted. In particular, readers are thrown into context straight away in the prologue with a rather desperate race to reach the Danube and deliver a crucial alliance proposal to Emperor Licinius. The alliance is historical although the conditions under which the first contact was initiated may not be. The episode is however quite gripping and it sets the tone for the rest of the novel, with the hero’s action tightly woven between the facts as reported by the sources. Another interesting streak in the plot relates to Christians, and to how Aurelius Castus, his fellow officers and Constantine’s army may have considered them with suspicion and considered the growing favour that they seemed to benefit from with dismay. There does not seem to be any direct historical evidence of this. However, the reactions and attitudes are very plausible and even probable especially since the Roman army was staunchly in favour of the “old gods” and had been purged of Christians. Most of these were located in cities and, as a percentage of the Empire’s total population, they do seem to have still been a relatively small minority in around AD 300, as the author mentions in his historical note (and contrary to what I used to believe).
One possible weakness in the plot is the involvement of Sabina, wife of the up-and-coming Aurelius Castus, and the destitute daughter of an executed Senator whose property had been long confiscated who seems ready to do just about anything to retrieve her lost prominent position. I do not mean this as a criticism. It is only that I did not find her behaviour to be entirely convincing. However I will stop here to avoid spoilers and because this was a relatively minor point. Much more convincing, however, was the ambiguous Empress Fausta, the wife of Constantine, but also the daughter of Maximius Augustus whom her husband at least helped to destroy, and the younger sister of Maxentius, Constantine’s rival and enemy. Here again, there is no clear indication of whether she really played a role and, if she did, what that role could have been. However, her family links and the fact that she did come to a rather unpleasant end years later and very possibly thanks to her husband make her involvement both possible and credible.
Then there is the pace of the book – which I found rather fast and breath-taking - and “the action”, which is simply superb. The battles, in particular that of Verona and Milvian Bridge are well-rendered, given you vivid images of what it meant to fight in a shield wall and the horrors it involved, but without the “over-the-top” gore of having heads and limbs flying all over the battlefield that some authors feel obliged to indulge in. The battle of Verona was quite griping. The terror of having to wait for this, the charge of hundreds of fully armoured Clibanarii at Taurinum is also particularly well rendered, just like a similar feature had been portrayed in the first volume of the Series against the Sassanid Persians. I was not quite sure about the latter battle because the author has concentrated exclusively upon the clash between the super-heavy cavalry and the legions of Constantine, as if only the former were present on the battlefield, but in thousands and making up the whole of Maxentian forces. This, however, is a bit of knit picking, especially since the result of such a focus is superb. The smaller actions, while perhaps more fictional, are just as realistic. A particularly superb example is the storming of the well-defended fortress of Segusio.
This book also includes some remarkable characterisation. While some characters may be more convincing than others, some are simply outstanding. The best of the lot is the hero Aurelius Castus himself. As I may have mentioned in another review of a previous book in the same story, the author has wanted to describe a though, rough battle-hardened Pannonian veteran, who is neither handsome nor unscarred, speaks Latin with a heavy Pannonian accent and barely knows how to read and write. He is also extraordinarily brave, prone to extreme violence, especially when overcome with battle rage, and an inspiring leader. He is also totally loyal to Constantine, bluntly honest to the point of putting his life in danger by insulting the Emperor and possessed with an overwhelming sense of duty and honour. He has a keen grasp of tactics and strategy and some remarkable fighting skills but he is no superman and gets battered about and wounded in battle yet another time. He also has some very human vulnerabilities that make him all the more credible and human, starting with a certain clumsiness when not on the battlefield or among soldiers. By combining all the features, Ian Ross has certainly helped me to imagine what one of these though Illyrian, Pannonian or Moesian soldiers that formed the backbone of the legions at the time could look like. Interestingly, the resulting character is both impressive, or even terrifying at times, and quite likeable.
Some of the other characters are also fascinating. This is in particular the case of Constantine himself with his carefully studied aloofness and self-control hiding, sometimes barely, his doubts and fears. Other characters, while good, are perhaps more conventional, such as that of the malevolent Julius Nigrinus whose cynical and unscrupulous behaviour makes him more of a spy master than his official title of Notary seems to indicate. Then there is the character of Macer, the hard but ageing drill-master for whom the army is all his life and who dreads the time when he will have to retire and feels threatened by Aurelius Castus when he takes-over the command of the Second Britannica legion, and then there are many, many others that I will let you discover as you read through this remarkable novel. Five stars.
Finally, there are dozens of books on Constantine and I do not pretend to have read all of time. However, for those interesting in this period and these events, and in addition to the references mentioned by the author in his historical note, I can recommend “the Age of Constantine” edited by Noel Lenski and Paul Stephenson “Constantine Unconquered Emperor. Christian Victor.”
An excellent read...can't wait for the next book
Well written ...... am following the series!
Ross is a wonderful writer, who brings to life a time relatively unknown to the average reader. Frankly I couldn't put the books down.
The best volume so far in this excellent series. Ian Ross is getting better and better. HIs characters are well crafted and he does not let the battle scenes overshadow the overarching, character-driven narrative. Can't wait to get my hands on the next installment of this riveting portrayal of the Imperial in the Age of Constantine!
0 Response to "[ARF]≡ PDF Free Battle for Rome (Audible Audio Edition) Ian Ross Jonathan Keeble Lamplight Audio Books"
Post a Comment