SPQR V: Saturnalia
Jul. 8th, 2010 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aJust finished Saturnalia, the fifth of the SPQR books by John Maddox Roberts. I checked it out from the library and, alas, it had the faint smell of Lysol on all its pages. The trials and travails of library books!
Back to Rome! And some variety in the series. Our hero, Decius, is starting to get some respect from his peers. His father actually calls him in to look into this murder, the apparent poisoning of one of his kinsmen. Though we do get some of the same 'ole "we can't prosecute because of politics", when Decius actually figures out what's going on in the end ... he takes things into his own hands. It's good to see both the evolution of Decius' character and his relation with others.
There's also a surprising amount of continuity. A lot of the situation and the mystery comes out of setup in earlier books. I kinda wished I remember them better ...
Back to Rome! And some variety in the series. Our hero, Decius, is starting to get some respect from his peers. His father actually calls him in to look into this murder, the apparent poisoning of one of his kinsmen. Though we do get some of the same 'ole "we can't prosecute because of politics", when Decius actually figures out what's going on in the end ... he takes things into his own hands. It's good to see both the evolution of Decius' character and his relation with others.
There's also a surprising amount of continuity. A lot of the situation and the mystery comes out of setup in earlier books. I kinda wished I remember them better ...