I recommend watching the mini series instead! ( )Ī dying man who survived to old age thanks to physical effects of an illness at a young age that made defective in the eyes of his family tells history about the deadly power politics of early Imperial Rome. I wanted to love this book - maybe I wanted to love it too much.
It focused on the rule of Caligula, and suddenly the storytelling became a lot better and more compelling, and it mostly followed one person - which made it a lot easier to absorb. The last quarter of the book seemed like someone else wrote it to me. What I did like is that the book did give a strong picture of what life was like in the Roman Empire at that time - it made me more interested to pick up a true history book on the time period. And I've seen the mini series! And I downloaded a family tree - which still didn't cover about a third of the characters mentioned. There were so many characters that without a family tree it was easy to get lost. Telling, not showing, the reader what happened. etc.įor all the MANY exciting things that happen in this book, I didn't feel like Graves brought it to life successfully. As it turns out, Claudius is quite clever and a student of history, and he manages to survive a time period filled with the absolutely most heinous plots, banishments, poisonings, etc. The book is narrated by Claudius, who was born into the leading family of the Roman Empire, and who happens to be considered mentally handicapped because of his physical infirmities and speech impediments. In my mind, Graves is just not a good storyteller. I just felt this book could have been so much more.
Plus, it is epic historical fiction, which usually I love (James Michener fan here). I've watched the mini series, based on this book, twice, and I really enjoyed. Well, I think this was a situation where my expectations were sky high, and they were not realized.
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