Terra Incognita
Egypt is a considerable asset to the Roman empire. It produces lots of food, and supplies gold from deeper in the African interior. The source could be Kush or Ethiopia and beyond them – who knows – but it could be very valuable. Emperor Nero has the bright idea of travelling down the Nile to find its source, offer sacrifices to the gods of the river, reconnoitre the lands it passes through, and decide whether it is practical to conquer them. The expedition consists of two cohorts of the Praetorian guard led by a by-the-book tribune called Curtius Lupus, keen to redeem himself after previous misdeeds. The real commanders are our principal protagonists, two experienced and professional centurions, Sempronius Densus and Claudius Faventius.
This expedition really happened. Details of it are sparse, so it should be possible to build an engaging story. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of an overarching storyline, and the whole novel therefore becomes very episodic, with each chapter having a “this episode’s monster/tribe/natural disaster to be dealt with” feel. Some of the more interesting strands, for example an evolving power struggle in Kush, don’t go anywhere, and the ending is particularly rushed. The viewpoint regularly switches between the two centurions, sometimes even in the same scene. Fortunately, they are so similar they could be the same character anyway.
There’s a lot of research gone into this, and the situation and details are genuinely very engaging, but as a novel it’s not well-realised.
