BOOK: Sophia McDougall, "Rome Burning"

Sophia McDougall: Rome Burning. London: Orion, 2007. 9780752860794. xviii + 472 pp.

Introduction

This is a sequel to Romanitas, an alternative-history novel set in the present time but in a world in which the Roman Empire never collapsed but instead occupied approx. half of the world. (See also my post about Romanitas, which I read last year.)

I enjoyed reading Romanitas a lot, but I liked Rome Burning even better. Just like with Romanitas last year, I was staying awake later than usual because I couldn't put the book down.

Comparison with Romanitas

According to a note on p. vi, this is the second of three books set in this alternative-history timeline; the third one is planned to be published next year. Well, one question that often interests me when it comes to trilogies is how well their individual parts stand on their own, i.e. if you consider them as individual works rather than as parts of a trilogy. Romaintas did just fine in this respect: it didn't assume that the reader has any prior knowledge of the alternative-history world in which the story takes place (which is of course natural as this was the first book in the series), and it provided a reasonable ending of the story so that the reader doesn't feel that the story is incomplete (although you could see that things have been set up so that the story could conveniently continue in the sequels). In contrast to that, Rome Burning is in my opinion not so suitable for being read as an individual work; it would be better to read Romanitas first. It's true that you get, here and there, brief explanatory passages of information that you already remember from Romanitas (if you have read it) and that could therefore in principle be helpful to a reader that hasn't read Romanitas yet; but I doubt that these passages would be enough to make such a reader really comfortable. They are OK to refresh your memory if you have read Romanitas a year or two ago and have forgotten the details, but a newcomer to the series would do best to start with Romanitas rather than jumping ahead and reading Rome Burning first.

The other thing is about the ending of the story; in Romanitas, as I said above, there was a normal enough end of the story; but here in Rome Burning the end is very abrupt and doesn't give you a sense of closure at all. In Romanitas you could see just that the story *could* conveniently continue, while in Rome Burning you see that it absolutely *must* continue, otherwise you will be left quite frustrated. Indeed the end here in Rome Burning is very dramatic; it reminded me of what I heard was a widespread practice in some TV series that span multiple seasons: at the end of the season, in the last episode, they gather most of the characters in one place and set up a big explosion or some other kind of disaster just at the end of the episode. That way any of the characters could either survive or die, and both of these possibilities would seem equally plausible. The purpose of all this is to prevent the actors for demanding higher salaries when they are negotiating for the next season: the producers can conveniently sack any actor who gets too demanding, since his character's absence from the next season will be easily explained to the audience by saying that he died in the disaster at the end of the preceding season. This practice strikes me as horribly cruel, cheap and sleazy. In a novel, it is not so objectionable since no real people are suffering because of it, but still it strikes me as a somewhat cheap way of building suspense. The end of Rome Burning looks like a classic example of what I have just described. It isn't clear to me whether the members of the Imperial family were evacuated from their box in time or not, or if the explosion did affect them, which ones would survive and which ones won't; and even Dama could, with a bit of effort, be made to survive his fall from the roof of the Colosseum. Anyway, this doesn't really bother me much by itself; what annoys me more is that the ending is so incomplete that I can really hardly wait for the third part of the series, to be published next year. I suppose this is just what the publishers want, of course, but I'm not entirely happy about it :)

There are several other aspects in which I felt that this book was an improvement on Romanitas. Una's paranormal abilities (about which I have already grumbled in my post about Romanitas last year) aren't so prominent here in Rome Burning, and aren't so crassly employed to create more suspenseful situations. I think this is a very nice improvement. Another thing I liked about Rome Burning is that the story moves through a wider range of locations. A considerable part of it even takes place outside the Roman Empire, mostly in China, and one brief scene in Japan. We also observe Marcus' train journey through the Sarmatian steppes, and towards the end of the novel there's a chapter that is set on some remote island in the Hebrides.

The story

<spoiler warning> Here's a short summary of the story. It is three years after the events of Romanitas; the old emperor Faustus is temporarily incapacitated by a stroke and Marcus, his nephew, takes up the position of regent. Marcus' cousin Drusus, who has already been one of the leading villains in Romanitas, comes out of the woodwork and starts scheming how to overthrow him. Drusus is especially annoyed by Marcus' relative humanity and pacifism; for example, Marcus is doing his best to avoid the outbreak of war with the Nionian empire (i.e. Japan; the two empires have a common border in North America, and are on the brink of war due to the recent incidents there); he has also proposed the abolition of crucifiction, and has manumitted all the slaves in the Imperial palace. There seems to be no doubt that he would abolish slavery altogether when/if Faustus dies and Marcus inherits his position. One very important source of support and encouragement to Marcus is his girlfriend Una; Drusus, noticing that, attempts to kill her in a few splendid scenes that made me hold my breath with excitement. Fortunately, he fails and ends up in prison, awaiting trial. Marcus travels to China, where he will negotiate with representatives of the Nionian empire and try to restore peaceful relations between the two superpowers. Meanwhile Drusus persuades a general Salvius, the commander of the Roman army, to release him from prison and take him to the emperor; the still-ailing and bedridden old man is partly convinced, partly bullied into agreeing with them that Marcus' policies are misguided and will dangerously weaken the Roman empire. Drusus travels to China, surprising Marcus there with the emperor's order commanding him to return to Rome. A sudden explosion kills one of the leading Nionian representatives. Marcus takes advantage of the confusion to hastily hand Una and his advisor Varius over to the Nionians as hostages, partly to reassure Nionia that the Romans had nothing to do with this assasination but partly, and more importantly, to prevent Una and Varius from getting into Drusus' hands. Despite Drusus' efforts to delay his journey, Marcus eventually returns to Rome, talks to the emperor who, by now somewhat confused and tired by all this, insists that Marcus and Drusus must now share the regency. Marcus returns to China, which is a clear sign that Drusus' coup has not been quite successful and people's loyalties shift into Marcus' favour again; Drusus' position is quite weak for the remainder of the novel. The negotiations with Nionia continue and are eventually brought to a happy conclusion, involving a detente, perhaps even a condominium, in North America. But this comes at a huge personal cost to Marcus: he ends up having to marry Noriko, the Nionian emperor's daughter. Although they treat each other kindly enough, it is clear that neither of them is happy with this dynastic marriage. Una, not wishing to be a concubine, leaves Marcus and is also supremely miserable. Meanwhile it turns out that the incidents along the Roman-Nionian border, as well as several other acts of terrorism, are due to the activities of an organization set up by Dama, a former slave who helped Marcus and Una so much during the events described in Romanitas but was gone without a trace at the end of that novel. Dama is hoping to provoke a world war which would bring about the collapse of the three big empires (Rome, Nionia, China) and a more just world, free of slavery, would presumably be able to rise from their ashes. In the very last few pages of the novel, he carries out a suicide bombing in the Colloseum, hoping to include the emperor, as well as Marcus and the rest of the imperial family, among the victims. </spoiler warning>

Character development

There are a lot more psychological and emotional things going on in this novel than there were in Romanitas, which I think is another improvement. I often found myself wondering how I would react in this or that situation, although I usually found that I lack the life experience necessary to really imagine how I would react. The saddest part of the story is undoubtedly when Marcus has to get married to Noriko for dynastic reasons, and Una leaves him. All three of them are clearly so miserable that I was damned close to weeping once or twice myself, and I certainly felt even more gloomy than usual for a couple of days.

Another thing that was rather sad to see was how Marcus has grown somewhat harsher due to his struggle against Drusus; see esp. pp. 335 and 348–52. In this latter passage, Marcus beats up Drusus in quite a gruesome way; it's interesting how much the impression these things leave on one depends on how they are presented. I remember the movie 300, with lots of gruesome swordfighting scenes and blood spurting by the bucketful, and it was all so hilariously funny that I just laughed. But here in the fight between Marcus and Drusus, it was described in such a way that I couldn't help feeling rather aghast, cringing and thinking ‘oh dear, how horrible’ — a reaction similar to what I would probably feel if I saw such a thing in real life.

One thing that stands the author in very good stead in that scene is her medical or, should I say, physiological bent: “he felt a rubbery crunch of bone under his knuckles, which came away wet [. . .] pain inflated densely into the hollows of his skull [. . .] Drusus gulped in a bubbling red breath” (pp. 348, 350). This sort of focus on low-level physiological details also appears in many other passages both here and in Romanitas (where probably the best example is the description of how a crucifiction works at the beginning of ch. 3); in many instances it felt to me more like an annoyance than something that improves the style, but here in this scene it works very well. You can really see very clearly how Marcus is little by little beating the very life out of poor Drusus, and how he really would have killed him if Varius hadn't stopped him in time. And you can see that it's not so easy to kill a person, and that it's very gruesome; a welcome reminder nowadays that death by violence is so commonplace and boring, both in the movies and in the news. Also, I couldn't help feeling sorry for Drusus at that time (which I think is a good thing), even though he had done some very bad things up until that point.

The alt-history world of the book

Some new things that we learn in this novel about the alternative-history world in which it takes place:

• there's a tunnel underneath the Otranto strait (p. 39);

• the last lions and tigers were killed three hundred years ago; gladiatorial games still exist, and gladiators now fight against polar bears and sharks (p. 40). Fighting “the beasts in the arena” is also a possible military punishment (p. 259);

• I already mentioned in my post about Romanitas that mobile phones are clearly not known, and there are several passages here in Rome Burning that confirm it. Many problems could be avoided if the characters were able to communicate simply, directly and immediately via mobile phones. Drusus' intrigue on pp. 145–8, where he lures Una into an out-of-the-way office so that she can use the phone, would be impossible. Etc.

• Another thing that I already noted last year is the absence of airplanes. Now Marcus is flown from Greece to Rome in a helicopter on p. 22, but when he has to travel home from China he goes by magnetway (p. 172). The magnet trains, incidentally, travel at 300 mph (pp. 273–4) and the “Silk Road magnetway” across central Asia consists of ten parallel tracks (p. 274).

• It would seem that Rome, China and Nionia don't exactly have a well-established tradition of diplomatic relations, otherwise they wouldn't be getting into the hilarious protocolary complications that are described on pp. 174–7.

• The current Chinese emperor is just a figurehead and the country is really ruled by his mother, the empress dowager. I guess that this was inspired by the real-world empress Tzu Hsi, who ruled China on the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

• The Chinese and the Nionians eat with sticks, just like in real life; Romans use spoons and knives (p. 178; forks aren't mentioned). And: “Often the Romans laid down their spoons to scoop up their food with their fingers, as was normal in the Empire.” (Ibid.)

• A Nionian general is developing a mysterious weapon of great power: “ ‘ [. . .] we would strike with a force like an invisible hammer, a hammer to level armies and cities two hundred miles away. In the near future, explosives will be virtually obsolete! [. . .] ’ ” (P. 183; and Romans will try to learn more about it and develop something similar of their own, pp. 317–8.) I guess that in the third novel we'll find out what exactly this is. Of course one's first thought is an atomic bomb, but that doesn't work “two hundred miles away”. Rockets perhaps? But that are still explosives. Maybe something altogether more exotic is intended [the HAARP project comes to mind :)].

• Tea is known in Rome but not widely used (p. 184).

• There is an interesting passage on the use of cars in Rome and China on p. 258. “Romans liked to travel in belligerent, implacable-looking behemoths, spacious within and seemingly capable of bulldozing over anything outside.”

• There aren't any TVs in the remote parts of China, and even phones are rare and extremely expensive (p. 284).

Miscellaneous

On p. 66 there's a passage that says about Sulien's memories of some of the events three years ago that although he rarely remembered them now, “they were there, like radioactivity in the bone marrow”. This struck me as very incongruous — there is otherwise no sign in this book that the world in which the story takes place is familiar with radioactivity.

Grumbling corner: I have a complaint about the ink used in the book. As often, I used a white piece of paper as a bookmark and also to slide it down the page as I read, to guide the eyes and make reading a little faster. Well, by the time I finished the book, the formerly white piece of paper was more gray than white, and quite greasy with all the ink it had picked up from the pages along which it had moved. What sort of vile, filthy muck did the printers use for ink? Is there any cost-cutting method that these greedy publishers will hesitate to adopt? I shudder to think what this book will look like in a few decades' time. Grrr.

Conclusion

This is an excellent and delightful book, even better than its predecessor. I heartily recommend both of them to anyone who is interested in this type of alternative-history novel, and I can hardly wait to read the third volume in the series (to be published in October 2008, according to amazon).

BOOK: Sophia McDougall, "Romanitas"

Sophia McDougall: Romanitas. London: Orion, 2005. 075286078X. xii + 452 pp.

This is a very enjoyable novel of alternative history. The point of departure is in the late 2nd century, when the Roman emperor Pertinax survives the assassination attempt (which, in reality, succeeded) and goes on to restore the strength of the empire with a series of reforms. As a result of this, the Roman empire does not collapse under the external pressures of the next several centuries, but manages to repel the various invaders and slowly expands its territory, eventually turning into a huge global superpower. This novel takes place in the present time, in the year 2757 AUC, by which time the Roman empire controls the whole of Europe; the northern half or so of Africa; Asia as far as India and western Siberia; a good deal of North America, and the whole of South and Central America. In addition to that, there is a ‘Nionian Empire’, i.e. Japan, which controls much of SE Asia, Australia, the various Pacific archipelagos, and the NW part of North America. In between there is a somewhat weakened Sina, i.e. China. The southern half of Africa used to be under Roman control but has recently managed to secede.

<spoiler warning> Set against this background, the novel is a gripping story of intrigue in the imperial family. The emperor's nephew Marcus has to flee from Rome as it turns out that the recent automobile accident of his parents was really a murder, and that his own life is also in danger. He stays for a while with a group of fugitive slaves, but eventually learns that his enemies are accusing his late father's friend and assistant Varius of having murdered Marcus. The latter therefore decides to return to Rome, hoping to somehow prove that he is OK and that he, his parents, and Varius are all victims of a malicious plot. The challenge is how to reach his uncle the emperor without getting into the clutches of someone who is in on the conspiracy and would happily do away with Marcus. With the aid of some of his new friends from the fugitive slave camp, he eventually succeeds, the conspiracy is uncovered and the novel is brought to a reasonably happy end. </spoiler warning>

I found the book somewhat difficult to get into — the first few chapters, although they were pleasant enough to read, didn't really make me burn with desire to pick up the book again the next day. However, by the time Una and Sulien meet Markus in ch. 6, the story picks up momentum and evolves into a real page-turner. In the last few days I was regularly staying up longer than usual in the evenings.

Paranormal abilities considered harmful

The only thing that annoyed me about this novel are the paranormal abilities of Una and Sulien. Una can read people's thoughts (if they are located close enough to her in space) and to some extent even influence them; see e.g. ch. 5, pp. 73–4; ch. 16, p. 282; ch. 21, p. 377). Sulien has unusual abilities to heal people, especially things like wounds or fractures; it isn't explained how he does it but it doesn't seem to involve any tools or anything of that sort, only his touch. These paranormal abilities of theirs are major elements of the plot: without them, the story wouldn't be able to proceed the way it does now, in several crucial places.

Now, there is of course nothing wrong in principle with giving people paranormal abilities in a work of fiction. But, honestly speaking, I cannot entirely avoid feeling that they act like a cheap deus ex machina here in this story — they allow the author to set up much more thrilling situations than she could do otherwise, because without these paranormal abilities the characters wouldn't have any realistic chances of getting out of these situations. Additionally, such paranormal abilities aren't really something I would expect in a work of alternative history: for me, alternative history means that the story is taking place in the same world that we are used to, only that certain historical events turned out differently than they really had — but these alternative outcomes must be within the bounds of probability. I would somehow understand if the author had at least tried to argue e.g. that because the Roman empire in her alternative history never collapsed, this led to a faster progress of scientific research and consequently enabled some people to reach these abilities that seem paranormal to us now; but she isn't doing anything of the sort. There is no explanation of the exact nature, let alone the origin, of these abilities, Una and Sulien seem more or less to have been simply born with them, it isn't clear whether other people with similar abilities also exist, etc. In short, it's a completely arbitrary plot device that doesn't even pretend to have anything to do with the real world.

The present-day Roman world

For me, one of the most exciting things about an alternative-history novel is to read how the author imagines the state of society and technology in his or her alternative-history timeline. In this novel, the Roman technology of the present day is substantially similar to ours; a few technologies from the real world are missing in the novel, but not (as far as I can tell) vice versa. Telephones and television are known, although they are consistently referred to by Latinate words — ‘longdictors’ and ‘longvision’. I guess this is meant to emphasize that in such an alterantive timeline, the Latin language would naturally carry much more prestige than the Greek (which is quite reasonable). There don't seem to be any mobile phones, however (e.g. in ch. 6, p. 87, a person needs to go to a particular room to make a phone call; and in ch. 23, p. 424, Gabinius is called to the phone by a slave, which suggests that the phone is stationary). Nor are there mentions of anything like the ubiquitous computers that sit on every desktop in our real world.

They don't seem to have airplanes of the sort we know in the real world, but there are ‘spiras’ or ‘spiral-wings’ which seem more similar to helicopters (“flight using circling wings powered by engines”, timeline, p. 451). In the absence of flight, passenger travel over long distances seems to be based chiefly on high-speed magnetic trains, which seems to be one of the few areas in which the world in the novel is really ahead of the real one, in which the network of magnetic railways is not nearly so widespread and well-developed. But maybe they have passenger flight too: see ch. 4, p. 66, “By magnetway or air he might have reached it in a day, but Varius had already ruled out going anywhere near public transport.” There exists a tunnel under the English Channel (ch. 5, p. 73) and another under the Strait of Gibraltar (ch. 7, p. 92); a “vast suspension bridge” is being constructed across the Persian Gulf (ch. 4, p. 58).

As for the languages, Latin is of course spoken widely throughout the empire, but this doesn't mean that other languages have been entirely exterminated. In the Pyrenees we still find the ‘Vascones’, i.e. the Basques, who keep their own language and some of them don't even understand Latin (ch. 12, p. 205). Marcus as a member of the imperial family and a likely future emperor has been taught Greek, Chinese, and Japanese as foreign languages (ch. 12, p. 206) — apparently Greek still has some prestige as a classical language (but “ ‘Greek's only good for writing’ ” says Marcus on p. 206 — perhaps it was dead by then, like Latin or ancient Greek are now in the real world?), while the other two would of course have been important for foreign policy. (He also knows a few words of Quechua and Navajo, p. 206.)

Slavery

Slavery is one of the major and recurrent themes in this novel. It is still a perfectly ordinary and widespread thing in the Roman empire at the time the story takes place, although there seem to be concerns that the number of slaves is decreasing because there aren't as many wars as there used to be (most of the world is already conquered, and the situation vis-a-vis Japan, Rome's chief rival, has been fairly stable for some time). See ch. 14, pp. 265–7, where Dama recounts his experiences as a slave employed in construction work, for an example of how slavery might function in such a relatively modern economy. The extent to which Roman society and economy rely on slaves is described by Varius in ch. 4, p. 55, but of course his arguments inevitably seem specious to a reader from our real world, which we all know to work well enough without outright slavery. I wonder to what extent slavery could really be included efficiently into a really modern economy, and whether it would accelerate the growth of any of the traditional sterile economic indicators, such as the GDP. The only large-scale experiment with slavery in a modern economy that I can think of at the moment is Germany during the WW2, but I'm not sure to what extent this can be extrapolated.

Marcus' father, before his murder/accident, was planning to abolish slavery should he succeed to the throne, and Marcus adopts the same resolution for himself. In fact his uncle, the present emperor, is himself not really opposed to this idea, but prefers to leave such tumultous reforms to his successors (ch. 24, p. 431).

Crucifixion is still a common punishment for slaves, just like in the ancient times, although they have modernized it somewhat by using a mechanical cross which pierces the limbs automatically and then raises itself up, so that the executioners don't need to do anything else but tie the victim onto the cross with ropes; nor do they seem to whip the victim beforehand. There is a fairly graphic description of the whole process in ch. 3, p. 19, and one of the more prominent characters in the story, Dama, is in fact a crucifixion survivor — he was rescued from the cross by some passers-by after spending some seven or so hours there, and has survived although his limbs are of course largely crippled (ch. 12, pp. 416–7). (Ch. 12, in which Dama is first introduced, is excellent this way — little by little it drops hints that guide the reader's attention towards Dama's curious disabilities, and only slowly does it become clear that this is due to a crucifixion.) (Incidentally, if you want a really detailed and gruesome description of an old-fashioned and brutal execution, and in a highly respected literary work to boot, I recommend the impalement scene in The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andrić.)

Incidentally, the web seems to be somewhat undecided about the spelling of ‘crucifixion’. Dictionaries, e.g. dictionary.com, allow only ‘crucifixion’, which also seems to be the most common on the web, with about 4.6 million hits on Google. But ‘crucifiction’ is also quite common, with about 2.0 million hits. In addition there are 50000 hits for ‘crucifixtion’.

There's an interesting monologue by Gabinius, the scheming and extremely rich man who is one of the chief villains of the book. His grandfather had been a slave: “ ‘I'm not — I won't be ashamed of him, either. He was a wonderful man. I'm the first one of my family who can stand for the Senate. And I'm going to. This, this — only in the Empire can that happen. Varius, the only places in the world where there isn't slavery of some kind are the places where everyone, to all intents and purposes, is a slave. We're the only ones who give them the chance to work their way out of it.’ ” (Ch. 11, p. 195.) It's remarkable how these same disgusting old arguments are the same in all ages and all parts of the world. Consider the idea that people must ‘work their way out’ of the lower class — some time ago I read nearly the same ideas in a book titled The Pro-Slavery Argument, published in South Carolina in 1852. Those defenders of slavery in the southern U.S. likewise claimed that they are practically doing the slaves a favour by forcing them to attain work habits, and that it will be reasonable to consider the abolition of slavery only after the slaves get far enough along this path of (work-)ethical development. Other parts of Gabinius' argument remind me very much of those put forth nowadays by proponents of cut-throat capitalism, the free markets, meritocracy, etc., etc. If you change just a few of Gabinius' words, you could get a classical cold-war era pro-capitalism argument: “The only places in the world where there isn't exploitation and inequality of some kind are the communist countries where everyone, to all intents and purposes, is a slave (of the state and Party).” Which, of course, is complete and utter bullshit. It is completely absurd to imply that a system in which everyone is left to his or her own devices and therefore the vast majority of the people are wasting away their whole lives in work and insecurity for the benefit of a small handful of the rich is somehow better and more conducive to freedom than a system in which the state helps the people, protects them from themselves as well as from each other, and keeps the economy under control to make sure it is used for the benefit of the whole society rather than just its wealthier parts.

Marcus' parents planned “to set up a system of free healthcare for slaves, so that their owners would have no reason to abandon them when they became sick. [l. . .] Leo [Marcus' father] had wanted the companies which relied most heavily on slavery to pay the most.” (Ch. 4, p. 58.) Maybe I'm biased, but this reminds me awfully strongly of the periodic debates on universal healthcare in the U.S. Am I just being blinded by my own political prejudice, or is the author inviting us to contemplate the parallels between ancient Roman slavery and the cut-throat capitalism of our modern age? (Although, of course, even if we do make such comparisons, they will not all lead to the identification of similarities. There are also some differences. Reading a portrayal of slavery in a fictional modern economy, such as the one in this novel, and comparing it with the condition of workers in the real world now, one cannot help concluding that the slaves are in a significantly worse situation after all.)

Una, who, like probably many other former slaves, can't read very well, is slowly struggling through an old copy of the Aeneid. “Marcus said stiltedly, ‘Are you still reading the book, the Virgil?’/ ‘It's propaganda.’ ” (Ch. 16, p. 283.) And it's true, of course; it is in fact one of the things that also annoyed me when I was reading the Aeneid. But it's interesting how now, since the Roman empire has been gone for so many centuries, the fact that it's propaganda isn't really the first thing we think of when we think of the Aeneid. I wonder if the same thing happens to other authors once the causes they espoused become sufficiently long dead and forgotten that people can read their works dispassionately. Will we be able, a thousand years from now, to read Kipling the same way we read Virgil now?

Miscellaneous

The author admits upfront (p. vi) that this book is intended to be the first part of a trilogy. It can stand by itself, in principle, but the end is far from fully satisfactory and it is clear that things have been laid out so that the story will have the opportunity to continue in the next novel. For example, we don't learn the ultimate fate of Delir and the rest of the escaped slaves of Holzarta after they had to evacuate their camp, pursued by imperial agents (ch. 24, pp. 436–7). Marcus has been designated heir to the position of emperor, but, of course, since his uncle (the present emperor) is still alive, there are any number of obstacles that the novelist may yet choose to place between Marcus and the throne. Nor can we be quite sure if the relationship between Marcus and Una will go on well, how the society around them would react to it (given that she is a recently freed slave), etc. Marcus' cousin and rival Drusus remains at large and apparently unsuspected of his complicity in the plot (ch. 24, p. 442); I guess he is likely to come up with some further mischief in the future. I look forward to reading the sequel, which, according to amazon.co.uk, will be called Rome Burning and will be published in the spring of 2007.

P.S. Three cheers for the publisher for setting the RRP of the hardcover edition at a mere £13 — this looks like a remarkably decent price in these crazy times when more and more publishers seem to consider it reasonable to price their books at insane things like £30. I, of course, wouldn't be the scrooge I am if I didn't go one better than that — I bought a mint copy of the book on eBay for a measly £2.5 :-)

P.P.S. I know I will fry in hell for making remarks like this, but there's a photo of the author on the back flap of the dustjacket. She is young, slim and pale — very pretty.

[Update: I've now read Rome Burning. I liked it even better than Romanitas; see my post about it.]