The Eve of War
This first book of three deals with Rome’s Social War, that is, the war against the Socii, or Italian allies (91-87 BCE). The actors are the fathers of that generation best known to us—Caesar, Cicero, Cato, who appear as teenagers. There is no plot, exactly. We follow ambitious Roman patricians struggling for prestige, clashing with their sons. A Tribune of the People, Drusus, is murdered, and his family has to deal with it. An embittered Socius, Poppaedius Silo, tries to organize against his perfidious Latin “ally.” Marius and Sulla turn up, but are not yet at war.
Too many point-of-view characters makes keeping track of the cast of thousands almost impossible. And the reader may not care. The writing is so stilted and inept that style forms an impenetrable fourth wall between reader and tale that prevents one from getting inside it and living the story. Grammar is chronically incorrect (e.g., “He dared not call out whomever maybe there”); words are used wrongly (e.g., the Romans “befell a disaster”). The author is apparently a screenwriter, but it isn’t apparent. What is apparent is that no editor has looked at this text, and the reader is left to cringe regularly, if they can force themselves to continue reading. This is the sort of book on an interesting subject that gives independent publishing a bad name.
