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julis's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Easily my least favorite of the series–and not just because it lacks Caesar. More than any other book, it makes very little effort to create a sense of time passing, which is crucial if you’re going to cover 14 years of action-packed history. Cleopatra and Antony are highly unlikable, Octavian borders on villainy. It becomes clear by ~36 that the legions have fundamentally changed from 45, but what McCullough makes no attempt to answer is why. For all that there are interesting and challenging interpretations in the other books, here she goes by boilerplate impressions of people and doesn’t delve into the massive sociological changes in Roman society in this time. Antony is an alcoholic, Cleopatra is incompetent and abusive, Octavian is conniving.
It could be better.
christine_fullam's review against another edition
3.0
I liked this book but did not realise it was part of a series!
dashausfrau's review against another edition
4.0
Had to check out the audio book twice to get through all 26 hours & got many of the names, races & locations mixed up in my head, but I don't think I'd have read the whole thing in book form. Reinforced my understanding that a) there are so many repeated names in Roman history that you would have to specialize to keep them straight, b) rulers should never be encouraged to believe they are gods, and c) the most important job of the politicians is to manipulate & obfuscate while telling entertaining stories to the public.
This historical fiction covered the story of Gaius Octavius as much or more than that of Marcus Antonius (the names are really lovely in the audio), & I think he's more interesting anyway.
This was a pretty noble picture of the famous love story- as noble as you can make two characters who truly believe they deserve to be worshiped by the whole world- and very well written, I thought.
This historical fiction covered the story of Gaius Octavius as much or more than that of Marcus Antonius (the names are really lovely in the audio), & I think he's more interesting anyway.
This was a pretty noble picture of the famous love story- as noble as you can make two characters who truly believe they deserve to be worshiped by the whole world- and very well written, I thought.
zizabeph's review against another edition
Didn't finish. Didn't realise that it's several books into a series, but also the characters and writing didn't really grab me.
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