This is the second book in Praetorian, Turney’s Roman historical series, and it is unusual in that Turney is one of the exceedingly rare self-published authors to whom I have returned and, no doubt, will return to again in the future.
Rufinus is back on duty in the Praetorian Guard but definitely not fully recovered from his trials at the end of the first book, The Great Game, when he is asked to go on a seemingly simple courier mission to deliver letters to the two sons of Perennis, the politically besieged commander of the Praetorian Guard. In Pannonia he and his friends discover much that they really would rather not have known and a race is on to get back to Rome in time to avert disaster.
These books are well researched and yet tend to take a slightly different tack to the generally accepted history of the time, all explained and justified by Turney in an author’s note at the end of the book, where he also apologises for finishing the book with the evil antagonist still at large, but what can you do when the historical records are quite adamant that he should indeed still be around? Sadly this made for a slightly less than satisfactory, if realistic, ending.
Along the way Turney tells the story with a generally fluid hand and well developed characters, though my one big complaint with his writing style is that those characters always seem to be extremes; the best, the clumsiest, the smartest, the most stupid and that’s just Rufinus, the main protagonist. Unusually for a self-published book Turney’s editing is generally good; not perfect, but the errors only appear occasionally rather than on every page, making it rather more liveable with than many I have had the displeasure of battling with. However, I think he does need a good editor to rein in his tendency to sometimes drift off into descriptions too detailed to be easily palatable. Particularly when describing fights where often excessive descriptions of all the options available to Rufinus are laid out in pedantic and wordy detail mid fight, usually followed with a statement along the lines of “all this flashed through Rufinus’s mind in brief seconds before…”
Despite the few grumbles this is good solid historical fiction, if a little too heroically Boy’s Own at times, and it makes for good easy reading.
4/5 stars
Rufinus is back on duty in the Praetorian Guard but definitely not fully recovered from his trials at the end of the first book, The Great Game, when he is asked to go on a seemingly simple courier mission to deliver letters to the two sons of Perennis, the politically besieged commander of the Praetorian Guard. In Pannonia he and his friends discover much that they really would rather not have known and a race is on to get back to Rome in time to avert disaster.
These books are well researched and yet tend to take a slightly different tack to the generally accepted history of the time, all explained and justified by Turney in an author’s note at the end of the book, where he also apologises for finishing the book with the evil antagonist still at large, but what can you do when the historical records are quite adamant that he should indeed still be around? Sadly this made for a slightly less than satisfactory, if realistic, ending.
Along the way Turney tells the story with a generally fluid hand and well developed characters, though my one big complaint with his writing style is that those characters always seem to be extremes; the best, the clumsiest, the smartest, the most stupid and that’s just Rufinus, the main protagonist. Unusually for a self-published book Turney’s editing is generally good; not perfect, but the errors only appear occasionally rather than on every page, making it rather more liveable with than many I have had the displeasure of battling with. However, I think he does need a good editor to rein in his tendency to sometimes drift off into descriptions too detailed to be easily palatable. Particularly when describing fights where often excessive descriptions of all the options available to Rufinus are laid out in pedantic and wordy detail mid fight, usually followed with a statement along the lines of “all this flashed through Rufinus’s mind in brief seconds before…”
Despite the few grumbles this is good solid historical fiction, if a little too heroically Boy’s Own at times, and it makes for good easy reading.
4/5 stars
