Nero

May 1, 2024
A sweeping novel of ancient Rome and the early days of Nero. To borrow a philosopher's phrase opining on another era, life in ancient Rome was nasty, brutish, and short--and being on top of the heap didn't seem to help much. In the year 37 CE, the brutal Emperor Tiberius is dying. Agrippina is related to him by marriage and has a young son, Lucius, who will one day become known as Nero. Sit back and enjoy--or cringe at--this bloody tale that is littered with the bodies of the powerful, the ambitious, and the innocent. The story roughly follows Agrippina and her son, Lucius, who carry cruelty in their genes. She, for example, poisons her husband, Italus, a centurion who seems only to have treated her well. When the wretched Tiberius dies, Agrippina's brother becomes emperor. He is Gaius Julius Caesar, nicknamed Caligula, or Little Boots, and he is "quite mad...as dangerous as any scorpion." "It was death to touch" Caligula, even to rescue him from a dangerous fall. He exiles his sister on a vague suspicion, but after she eventually returns, she marries his uncle Claudius, who spits on his nephew's corpse. In time, she and Lucius accompany Claudius on his campaign to conquer Britannia. Then--no spoiler, this--Agrippina tells the lad that one day he'll be Emperor Nero. The novel seems to follow historical events as accurately as possible, considering the passing of two millennia. "Life was violence," and so at times was birth, as in one horrific scene with Caligula's son. The fact that Nero murders his mom will have to wait for a sequel. Splendid storytelling about ambition, cruelty, and power.

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May 15, 2024
After an excursion to ancient Greece, most recently in Empire (2023), Iggulden circles back to Rome, the setting for his original Emperor series, as he begins a new trilogy about the forces that shaped Emperor Nero's life. Nero is still a child when this novel wraps up with the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 CE, so his mother, Empress Agrippina, is the focal point here. Using her considerable wiles and attractiveness, Agrippina conceives a plan for maneuvering her son into the position of imperial heir and does whatever it takes to succeed. Spanning the paranoid finale of Tiberius' reign through Caligula's madness and the accession of the scholarly Claudius, who is ruthless in his own way, the story illustrates the era's political infighting, depravity, and bloody viciousness using full-color imagery and eloquent language that sings with vigor. "Life was violence," Agrippina comes to believe, "If you survived, you walked away to heal and plot your revenge." Honor exists, but is rarely rewarded. Iggulden acknowledges taking some historical liberties to streamline his tale, which zips along with great energy.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.