ClareR (5950 KP) rated The Story Spinner in Books
Jan 18, 2025
This novel is set in a period of history that I know nothing about. Everything was new, interesting and exciting. I know little of the Romans in Britain era. I wasn’t aware that Welsh princesses were married off to Roman generals - like Elen, from the land of the Silures, in 382AD. She has quite some story, stretching from Wales to the Roman Empire.
Cadi is a writer in 2024, and when she hears marching feet in the lane outside her cottage but sees nothing there, she finds she’s able to see the story of Elen as she writes it down. There’s something in the meadow behind her house that connects the two times - but time is running out. Someone is trying to take Cadi’s peace and sell the land to build on. And the story will be lost.
I loved the historical detail in Elen’s time, and the excitement in Cadi’s. Elen’s story is pretty exciting too, to be fair. It amazed me just how much she was able to travel around Europe and further afield. This book is pure escapism, and I loved it. History, magic - what more do you need!
Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500-2000
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The House with the Golden Door
10.0
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Amara has escaped her life as a slave in Pompeii's most notorious brothel. She now has a house, fine...
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David McK (3600 KP) rated Sword in The Storm (Rigante #1) in Books
Sep 7, 2025
All four novels are also largely 'coming of age' tales, with this entry following the childhood and early adulthood of Connavar, who is given the soul name "The Sword in the Storm" at this birth and who -initially, at least - grows up believing his father - who died shortly after he was born - to be a coward, despite his stepfather Ruathain (his fathers best friend) trying to convince him otherwise.
As with all of Gemmell's work, well worth a read!
Revenge of Rome (Eagles of the Empire #23)
6.0
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AD 61. Britannia is divided. The rebel horde has been defeated. But the leader, Boudica, and her...
David McK (3600 KP) rated The Honour of Rome (Cato and Macro #20) in Books
Apr 24, 2022
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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The Silk Road was the current name for a complex of ancient trade routes linking East Asia with...