Hodder & Stoughton | 2023 (16 February) | 320p | Review copy | Buy the book
It is 193 AD and the grand plan of Marcus, Scaurus, Dubnus and their comrades to escape the clutches of the Roman war machine once and for all founders when their ship home is met by soldiers who have one job, and that is to recruit any man who can stand up into the ranks of the Roman army. There is a new emperor on the throne, Septimius Severus, and his mission is to destroy the ‘imposter’ emperor of the East, Niger – once he’s seen off another imposter in Rome, of course. The heroic reputations of Scaurus and his men proceed them and it’s not long before Severus dispatches them eastwards on a suicide mission – to take on Niger with only one legion, delaying him while Severus prepares an almighty army to crush him underfoot. The mission is accepted. It will be at a great cost.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this series since its beginning, thirteen books ago, and I am so pleased to see it continue into what the author describes as its ‘second cycle’. This means that there is much more to come and that makes me very happy indeed! It’s difficult to review a book this deep into a long-running series without giving anything away from before. Suffice to say that Storm of War does mark a kind of new beginning for our favourite Roman centurions and tribunes. This means that if you haven’t read any of the other books then you could start here. There are also some handy little catch-ups in the story, which recaps Marcus’s struggles from the past – not to mention his less than ideal relationships with past emperors!
Storm of War introduces some new characters to the series, including the tour de force that is Septimius Severus. What a man he is! Anthony Riches does a great job bringing this powerful, charismatic and utterly terrifying man to life and his scenes with Scaurus and Marcus are among my favourite moments of the novel. I think only Scaurus and Marcus could stand up to him. There is a sense that they have nothing to lose but honour and that they can never lose.
There is action throughout, including a battle, which feels different from most others in Roman military fiction. I think this is partly because this is civil war and the soldiers fight men they have previously served beside. It’s a dirty battle, harrowing and…. well, you must read it. But there’s more to the novel than battles, there are journeys, spies, great bits on boats, and it’s told with expertise and humour.
The author likes to take us to the limit of what we can endure with these deeply loved characters and I will admit I was as traumatised as I was gripped! This is a great story about a time of Roman history I know relatively little and the author certainly knows his stuff when it comes to Roman military action and keeping his readership on the edge of its seat.
And what a cover!
Other reviews and features
Empire I: Wounds of Honour
Empire II: Arrows of Fury
Empire III: Fortress of Spears
Empire IV: The Leopard Sword
Empire V: The Wolf’s Gold
Empire VI: The Eagle’s Vengeance
Empire VII: The Emperor’s Knives
Empire VIII: Thunder of the Gods
Empire X: The Scorpion’s Strike
Empire IX: Altar of Blood
Empire X: The Scorpion’s Strike
Empire XI: River of Gold
Empire XII: Vengeance
Betrayal: The Centurions I
Onslaught: The Centurions II
Retribution – The Centurions III
An interview for The Eagle’s Vengeance
An interview for The Emperor’s Knives
Domitian was, through many of his formative years, the heir and spare to an ambitious general, a sometime challenger to the imperial throne and then the emperor himself, Vespasian. It wasn’t easy living through, in one piece, the reigns of Nero and the subsequent conveyor belt of ill-equipped and doomed emperors, and Domitian suffered as much as anyone, seeing family members murdered. But Domitian survived because he turned his seeming unimportance into a talent, creating a spy network that would see him out of all sorts of trouble and push his family ever upwards. He was an observer of everyone while being observed by none, except by his noble friend and political tutor Nerva, who takes some time out, in the aftermath of it all, to tell us all about it. You won’t want to turn away.
It is AD 400 and the Roman Empire is disintegrating and, outside of the city of Rome itself, nowhere is this more apparent than on the empire’s fringes. Hadrian’s Wall was built almost 300 years before, several of the forts along this border even earlier. And now it decays. Prefect Marcus Flavius Victor is Lord of the Wall, a title inherited from his heroic father, and he’s earned it in his own right. He’s feared and admired by his own men and also by the tribes across the Wall who sense that the Romans no longer have the power to defend the Wall. As Marcus works to rebuild morale, men, buildings and resources along the Wall, the tribes stir.
The Roman city of Pompeii is enjoying its heydey and life is looking good for Amara, who once worked as a prostitute in the city’s most infamous and famous brother, the Wolf Den. She has been rescued by a wealthy man and he is now the only man she serves as one of Pompeii’s most glamorous courtesans. But she can’t leave her friends there behind. She is haunted by their continued suffering while being all too well that her own good fortune is transient. And so Amara sets out to help them, especially her closest friend Victoria, and that means she must go back into the wolf’s lair.
It 25 BC and Egypt is not what it once was. Pharaoh-less, it is ruled by Romans, hungry for its wealth and resources. The Queen of the Kush, far to the South, also has her eye on it and that means trouble. The 22nd legion is sent up the Nile to deal with the Queen’s army and raiders and among it is Titus Cervianus, an army medic and scientist who has the distinction of being both extremely talented at mending people while being incredibly unpopular and picked upon. It doesn’t help that he finds himself friends with one of the legion’s troublemakers, Ulyxes. As they travel deeper into Egypt, there is danger everywhere, from within the legion, from terrifying enemy fighters, and from the Nile itself, which thrashes with crocodiles.
It is AD 58 and retired Praetorian Centurion Macro has arrived in Londinium, Britannia, with his new wife Petronella. It wasn’t plain sailing getting there, to put it mildly, and, now that she’s seen the place, Petronella isn’t impressed. But the plan is to spend Macro’s retirement running the inn and brothel that he co-owns with his formidable mother Portia while also managing a farm in the veteran’s colony of Camulodunum.
It is December AD 192 and Marcus Aquila, known and loved by many in his disguise as Marcus Corvus, has returned to Rome, his identity once more hidden. He has a mission and it is a deadly one. The mentor of Marcus’s commander Scaurus has plans. His name is Pertinax. He is a respected and honoured member of the Senate and he and many like him have had more than enough of the megalomaniac gladiator emperor Commodus. The news that Commodus intends to murder Pertinax and many of his colleagues on New Year’s Day is the final desperate straw. But to kill Commodus, a man of Herculean strength, protected by his Praetorians, will take a soldier like no other. But Marcus Aquila is no ordinary man. His swordfighting skills in the arena and on the battlefield are legendary and his hatred and hunger for vengeance against Commodus are unequalled. The soldiers and politicians of Rome wait and watch in the wings. Each has an agenda and each will be merciless.
It is AD 265 and the famous general Ballista is returning from Rome and the empire’s battlefields to his family in Sicily. With him travels Isangrim, the eldest son he barely knows. The journey is intended to remedy that but, from its outset, catastrophe piles on disaster and it becomes a fight for survival. The island is aflame with a slave revolt. The roads aren’t safe, luxurious villas have become slaughter houses, as slaves spill out from farms, mines and houses, following the man they believe to be their messiah. Many of them are recently captured Germanic warriors and Ballista, himself considered a barbarian by many of his equestrian class, as well as by his son, feels a connection but his mission is to keep his son safe, to find his family and defeat the brutal revolt.
It is 173 AD and only the Danube stands between the mighty army of Marcus Aurelius and the complete destruction of the Sarmatians, a fierce, fractious nomadic people. The warrior tribes come together to fight the Romans on the Danube’s ice surface but it is a disaster. Few survive and those that do must make a choice when given a terrible ultimatum by an emperor who believes himself a god. Kai survived, hidden by one of the fearsome horses that his people prize, and must become a leader of sorts, a role that doesn’t suit because to many he is a coward, a shamed outcast. And no-one hates him more than his sister, the most feared of warriors. But, as the winter freezes the ground and people alike, the Sarmatians must walk an uncertain path between honour and shame, watched over by a Roman army, fascinated by their enemy but determined to crush it forever.
Pompeii, AD 74: Amara wasn’t always a slave and ‘Amara’ wasn’t always her name. A Greek and a doctor’s daughter, family ruin led her on this path to slavery and prostitution in the Wolf Den, Pompeii’s most notorious Lupanar, or brothel. The women who work alongside her on these stone beds in confined cells come from all sorts of backgrounds. Some know no other life, saved from rubbish heaps where they had been dumped as babies, but others, like Amara and Dido, stolen from her home in Carthage, remember their past lives and are desperate for freedom. Amara is determined to get it, but at what cost?
For winter nights - A bookish blog 