Vespasian is one of my favourite Roman Emperors - I've always liked his competency, sense of humour, level of achievement, and down to earth (from all accounts) nature. It was clever of Fabbri to pick him as the star of a series of novels.
This deals with Vespasian's early life and his first adventures, rather in the manner of George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman. There is much historical detail but little of Flashman's humour and verve unfortunately; and Fabbri is no way near Fraser's league as a writer yet. Some of the dialogue is particularly bad and the story becomes overly "plotty" too often. But it's written with keenness, and pace and Fabbri has a real flair for action sequences and violence, and I got into this more as I went on. It's got a decent plot, involving Antonia, a young Caligula and
evil Thracians - and although I wish we'd gotten to meet Tiberius and
Sejanus it's a worthy page turner about a great figure in history.
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