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A review by zephyrsilver
Roma by Steven Saylor
Did not finish book.
First off, I didn't finish this book. I only got to about two-hundred pages before I put it away. I might go back to it, but I'm not sure.
The concept is really cool; it's a story about the city, Rome, told through the people who lived there, particularly following two families. Each chapter is a new set of people, a new time.
Some of it was really cool. One thing I liked was how you could see the stories becoming mythology. How events in a previous chapter were turned into these elaborate stories in the next chapter. The stories were rather normal when they took place, but as they were passed down, generation to generation, they got more elaborate and eventually turned into the Roman mythology we know today. So that was cool.
Unfortunately, I was bored. I never got attached to any of the characters. Some of the ones I did like I only knew for about twenty of thirty pages. Then really uninteresting characters had eighty to one hundred pages. But they were impossible to get attached to. They were all so flat.
Also, I know this is historically accurate, but the misogyny was so painful. I kept having to put the book down because I was so pissed. I know that's the way it was back then, but it still definitely made it hard for me to read, seeing as most of the male characters were misogynistic pigs, and most of the female characters were one-dimensional, boring characters.
This does a great job with de-Romanticizing history and making ancient Rome feel real. But it was just so boring and difficult to read. I love historical fiction, but I just couldn't do it with this one.
The concept is really cool; it's a story about the city, Rome, told through the people who lived there, particularly following two families. Each chapter is a new set of people, a new time.
Some of it was really cool. One thing I liked was how you could see the stories becoming mythology. How events in a previous chapter were turned into these elaborate stories in the next chapter. The stories were rather normal when they took place, but as they were passed down, generation to generation, they got more elaborate and eventually turned into the Roman mythology we know today. So that was cool.
Unfortunately, I was bored. I never got attached to any of the characters. Some of the ones I did like I only knew for about twenty of thirty pages. Then really uninteresting characters had eighty to one hundred pages. But they were impossible to get attached to. They were all so flat.
Also, I know this is historically accurate, but the misogyny was so painful. I kept having to put the book down because I was so pissed. I know that's the way it was back then, but it still definitely made it hard for me to read, seeing as most of the male characters were misogynistic pigs, and most of the female characters were one-dimensional, boring characters.
This does a great job with de-Romanticizing history and making ancient Rome feel real. But it was just so boring and difficult to read. I love historical fiction, but I just couldn't do it with this one.