20 Books of Summer – Page 40 – What Cathy Read Next…

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Fort by Adrian Goldsworthy, the first book in a brand new trilogy set in the Roman empire. My thanks to Vicky Joss and Lauren Tavella at Head of Zeus for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my review copy.

And I think they deserve extra points for cleverly including a particular quote in the accompanying press release information!

About the Book

Dacia, AD 105. The Dacian kingdom and Rome are at peace, but no one thinks that it will last. Sent to command an isolated fort beyond the Danube, centurion Flavius Ferox can sense that war is coming, but also knows that enemies may be closer to home.

Many of the Brigantes under his command are former rebels and convicts, as likely to kill him as obey an order.

And then there is Hadrian, the emperor’s cousin, and a man with plans of his own.

Format: Hardcover (496 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 10th June 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find The Fort (City of Victory #1) on Goodreads

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My Review

My first experience of Adrian Goldsworthy’s novels was reading Vindolanda which I enjoyed very much. But of course you already know that if you’ve perused the press release shown above. (Unfortunately, its follow-up The Encircling Sea has been languishing in my TBR pile for quite a while.) Vindolanda was also the book that first introduced readers to Roman centurion, Flavius Ferox.

Although The Fort is the first in a new series, it once again features Flavius Ferox as well as some of the characters from the Vindolanda series. For example, Ferox’s friend Vindex and some of Ferox’s household staff. It appears to follow on directly from events in the final book in the Vindolanda trilogy, Brigantia. However, for the benefit of readers (like me) who haven’t read Brigantia, or indeed those who haven’t read any of the Vindolanda trilogy, the author provides subtle details about key events and characters from the earlier books.

Ferox’s current posting is to a remote fort on the border with Dacia (part of what is now Romania) during a period of uneasy and, in all likelihood, short-lived peace between that nation and the Roman Empire. He’s accompanied by a force of fierce Brigantes (Celtic Britons from the north of England) some of whom have vowed to kill him in revenge for an act of that they view as murder.

Like Ferox, the reader may wonder just why ‘this ragbag of rebels, bandits, deserters and rival tribesman’ has been sent to Piroboridava. In fact, as Ferox admits himself, he’s a bit of a ragbag, ‘a good Silurian boy turned Roman centurion’. But, ever practical, he sets about getting the rather rundown garrison into shape in order to have a better chance of defending a Dacian attack should it come, as his gut tells him is likely. This also serves to provide a focus for the disparate group of six hundred soldiers he finds himself responsible for and a way of dispelling the boredom that might otherwise bubble over into violence.

The story switches briefly to Rome where the reader is introduced to the Emperor Trajan’s cousin, the senator Hadrian who has recently been appointed legatus of the Minervia legion, some of whose soldiers have been deployed to Piroboridava. I knew very little about Hadrian before reading this book apart from the fact he later became emperor himself and built a famous wall in the north of England. The author gives a little nod to this by including a scene in which Hadrian shows a keen interest in the process of building design and construction. The Hadrian the reader is presented with here is intelligent, wily and ambitious although with a private life that leaves him open to manipulation by others.

Talking of private lives, the book was enlivened for me by the arrival at the fort of the feisty Claudia Enica, Queen of the Brigantes, and two young warriors, Bran and Miruna. All three have been trained in warfare by a woman known as ‘the Mother’. She trained them well as it turns out. From time to time a third point of view takes over, that of a young warrior, Brasus, placed in command of an advance guard of the Dacian army. His narrative is infused with the rituals associated with his tribe’s religious customs, giving it a mythical quality.

I confess the multiplicity of storylines left me rather confused to begin with but gradually things became clearer especially once many of the characters find themselves gathered together. Not so much Casablanca‘s ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world she walks into mine’ as ‘Of all the forts in all the Empire they ride up to the gates of mine’!

The book contains the sort of authentic detail – of weaponry, Roman army procedures, social and religious customs – you would expect from a historian of the author’s reputation. There is also an extensive glossary for those of us who can’t tell our gladius from our spatha. My fabulous hardcover edition also included a map of the region and a plan of the Piroboridava fort. As the author explains in his fascinating historical note at the end of the book, the fort’s location is fictional but is based on a Roman garrison of the same name situated closer to the mouth of the Danube.

For those who like plenty of full-on action in their historical fiction, there are only skirmishes to begin with. However, stick with it because there are scenes later in the book that will definitely not disappoint. The book’s final few chapters see some story lines resolved but others carefully set up as ‘to be continued’ plot lines to whet the appetite for subsequent books in the series. Consider my appetite well and truly whetted!

In three words: Authentic, pacy, action-packed

Try something similar: Fortress of Fury by Matthew Harffy

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About the Author

Adrian Goldsworthy studied at Oxford, where his doctoral thesis examined the Roman army. He went on to become an acclaimed historian of Ancient Rome. He is the author of numerous works of non-fiction, including Caesar, Pax Romana, Hadrian’s Wall and Philip and Alexander. He is also the author of the Vindolanda series, set in Roman Britain, which first introduced readers to Flavius Ferox.

Connect with Adrian
Website

On What Cathy Read Next last week

Blog posts

Monday – I published my review of Agent Running in the Field by John le Carré.

Tuesday – My take on this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was New Favourite Authors Discovered Thanks To Blog Tours.

Wednesday – WWW Wednesday is the opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to have a good nose around what others are reading. I also shared my review of This How We Are Human by Louise Beech as part of the blog tour.

Thursday – I shared my publication day review of Mrs England by Stacey Halls.

Friday – I published my review of The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, one of the books shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2021. Later I stuck my neck out with a prediction of the book that might win the prize when it is announced.

Saturday – I joined the blog tour for The Serpent King by Tim Hodkinson sharing my review of the fourth book in The Whale Road Chronicles series.

As always, thanks to everyone who has liked, commented on or shared my blog posts on social media.

New arrivals

The Book of Echoes by Rosanna Amaka (eARC, courtesy of Doubleday UK and Random Things Tours)

1981: England looks forward to a new decade. But on the streets of Brixton, it’s hard to hold onto your dreams, especially if you are a young black man. Racial tensions rumble, and now Michael Watson might land in jail for a crime he did not commit.

Thousands of miles away, village girl Ngozi abandons her orange stall for the opportunity to work as a housemaid for a middle-class family.

From dusty tracks to gritty pavements, Ngozi and Michael’s journey towards a better life is strewn with heartache. When they finally collide, their lives will be transformed for ever.

Still Life by Sarah Winman

We just need to know what the heart’s capable of, Evelyn.
And do you know what it’s capable of?
I do. Grace and fury.

It’s 1944 and in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance and bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening together.

Ulysses Temper is a young British solider and one-time globe-maker, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and relive her memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view.

These two unlikely people find kindred spirits in each other and Evelyn’s talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses mind that will shape the trajectory of his life – and of those who love him – for the next four decades.

Moving from the Tuscan Hills, to the smog of the East End and the piazzas of Florence, Still Life is a sweeping, mischievous, richly-peopled novel about beauty, love, family and fate.

The Hidden Child by Louise Fein (eARC, courtesy of Head of Zeus)

Eleanor Hamilton is happily married and mother to a beautiful four-year-old girl, Mabel. Her wealthy husband, Edward, a celebrated war hero, is a leading light in the burgeoning Eugenics movement – the very ideas that will soon be embraced by Hitler – and is increasingly important in designing education policy for Great Britain.

But when Edward and Eleanor’s otherwise perfectly healthy daughter develops debilitating epileptic seizures, their world fractures. Mabel’s shameful illness must be hidden or Edward’s life’s work will be in jeopardy and the family’s honor will be shattered.

When Eleanor discovers Edward has been keeping secrets, she calls into question everything she believed about genetic inferiority, and her previous unshakeable faith in her husband disintegrates. Alarmed, distressed, and no longer able to bear the family’s burden, she takes matters into her own hands.

End of Summer by Anders de la Motte (ARC, courtesy of Zaffre)

You can always go home. But you can never go back…

Summer 1983: Four-year-old Billy chases a rabbit in the fields behind his house. But when his mother goes to call him in, Billy has disappeared. Never to be seen again.

Today: Veronica is a bereavement counsellor. She’s never fully come to terms with her mother’s suicide after her brother Billy’s disappearance.

When a young man walks into her group, he looks familiar and talks about the trauma of his friend’s disappearance in 1983. Could Billy still be alive after all this time? Needing to know the truth, Veronica goes home – to the place where her life started to fall apart. But is she really prepared for the answers that wait for her there?

Plus, I went to drop off some books at my local Oxfam bookshop so of course this happened…

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

1957, south-east suburbs of London. Jean Swinney is a feature writer on a local paper, disappointed in love and – on the brink of forty – living a limited existence with her truculent mother: a small life from which there is no likelihood of escape.

When a young Swiss woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. But the more Jean investigates, the more her life becomes strangely (and not unpleasantly) intertwined with that of the Tilburys: Gretchen is now a friend, and her quirky and charming daughter Margaret a sort of surrogate child. And Jean doesn’t mean to fall in love with Gretchen’s husband, Howard, but Howard surprises her with his dry wit, his intelligence and his kindness – and when she does fall, she falls hard.

But he is married, and to her friend – who is also the subject of the story she is researching for the newspaper, a story that increasingly seems to be causing dark ripples across all their lives. And yet Jean cannot bring herself to discard the chance of finally having a taste of happiness…

But there will be a price to pay, and it will be unbearable.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

When the Queen in pursuit of her wandering corgis stumbles upon a mobile library she feels duty bound to borrow a book. Aided by Norman, a young man from the palace kitchen who frequents the library, the Queen is transformed as she discovers the liberating pleasures of the written word.