Emperor’s Lion (The Imperial Assassin 5)
Fifth in the Imperial Assassin series, Emperor’s Lion has the feel of historical believability right from the start. The “lions” involved are the Emperor Caracalla’s elite Leones bodyguard-cum-crack unit, into which Silas, the imperial assassin who is the anchor character for the series, is “promoted”. The Leones go everywhere that the Emperor goes—and so are subject to Caracalla’s increasingly desperate and unstable mood swings as the Senate loses confidence in him, and his lover’s life is at risk; only in the heat of battle, leading from the front with his bodyguard frantically trying to keep up, is the Emperor at peace. It doesn’t help that Silas’s other boss, the head of the Arcani, may be behind some of the plots fuelling the Emperor’s paranoia.
Gritty and exciting, this is a gripping read from start to finish, with several novel plotlines taking us from the sewers to the heights of Roman polite society, and to exotic reaches of the Roman Empire: a historical thriller at its most engaging. And then best of all for this reader is a comprehensive historical note detailing what did, and did not, happen in real life, and how the author dealt with the problem of story versus history, complete with extracts from contemporary accounts of the events dealt with in the book. Fascinating stuff—one gets the impression that it’s sometimes necessary to avoid the most unbelievable real events from this era when building a story! A thoroughly satisfying read; recommended.
