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David McK (3422 KP) rated The Honour of Rome (Cato and Macro #20) in Books

Apr 24, 2022  
The Honour of Rome (Cato and Macro #20)
The Honour of Rome (Cato and Macro #20)
Simon Scarrow | 2022 | Fiction & Poetry
7
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Entry #20 in Simon Scarrow's Macro and Cato series, which means there's been approximately one entry per year.

I can't believe it's been going that long (ummm ... in a good way).

Anyway, we're now back at the original setting of the series - back in Brittania; back after Cato and Macro's various adventures across the Roman Empire.

Things have changes since then, however - Macro is now retired from the legions, whereas Cato (originally Macro's optio) now outranks him and now has a family of his own to look after.

The previous entry in the series (The Emperor's Exile is the one in which Macro retired, leaving - with his new wife Petronella - to travel back to Brittania to reconnect with his own mother and to look after his share of an inn that she has opened in Londinium. As a result, he was missing for large chunks of the narrative: circa three quarters or so of the story, let us say.
Meanwhile, Cato was charged with accompanying Emperor Nero's mistress Claudia Acte into exile on Sardinia, with the bulk of the novel then following Cato, the burgeoning romance between him and Claudia and events on that island.

This novel mirrors that approach, with the larger bulk of this following Macro and his adventures in Londinium and in the veterans colony of Camulodunum (which I've just found out is Colchester, and the first Roman Capital of the province) before the two principal characters finally reunite circa - again - three quarters of the way into the story.

There's also the groundwork laid here for, to paraphrase the closing words of the novel, the brewing storm, with the inclusion of characters from earlier novels (round about When the Eagle Hunts) who belong to the Iceni tribe, and with how they are being treated by their new Roman overlords. Anybody with a passing knowledge of UK history will know who I mean ...
  
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David McK (3422 KP) rated Traitors or Rome (Eagle #18) in Books

Mar 29, 2020  
Traitors or Rome (Eagle #18)
Traitors or Rome (Eagle #18)
Simon Scarrow | 2020 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Book number 18 in Simon Scarrow's long-running Macro and Cato series, which means he's catching up on Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe for sheer proliferation of books with the same central character(s) (and that's a good thing).

Following on from the previous novel ("The Blood of Rome"), Macro and Cato are still in charge of the Praetorians, and still on the eastern fringes of the Roman Empire (Syria), with Cato then tasked with making a dangerous journey into Parthia to deliver Rome's demands to the ruler of that nation while the recently-married (at the start of the novel) Macro, under General Corbulo, lays siege to the small kingdom of Thapsis in the mountains which has risen in revolt against Rome.

I have to say, with a title like 'Traitors of Rome' and with the extremely mercenary (historical) nature of the Praetorian Guard, I first thought - when I saw the title - that the Traitors of Rome would themselves prove to be the Praetorians themselves!

That's not the case, however, read the novel to finds out what is ...